I Keep Repeating Myself
by valerie21601
Summary: The Valeyard is defeated, out of spite, he destroys Pete's World. Rose Tyler wakes up, in her 9-year-old body and finds out she's been given a second chance to save the multiverse and a chance to be with her Doctor. That is, if she wants it. This fic isn't Ten nor Tentoo friendly but it's pro-Nine friendly. Trigger warnings will be posted at the top of the chapters as needed.
1. I Keep Repeating Myself

I Keep Repeating Myself

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After the Valeyard is defeated, out of spite, he destroys Pete's World. Rose Tyler wakes up, in her 9-year-old body and finds out she's been given a second chance to save the multiverse and a chance to be with her Doctor. That is, if she wants it. Not only that, another person was sent back in time to help out. Her mum, Jackie with a little help from Jack, is sent back with her. Post – Journey's End and Pre – Rose.

Warning! This **isn't** a friendly Tentoo fic. Tentoo evolves into the Valeyard, who is the dark, diabolical side of the Doctor's personality. Nor is this a 10th Doctor friendly fic, but it is pro-9th Doctor friendly. It is not a traditional re-do fic.

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Fifty-five years after Bad Wolf Bay

 _The rapid firing, of guns and grenades exploding, men and women shouting orders, screaming and crying were all around her. The sounds of flesh being sliced filled her ears and her mind went blank for just a second, when she felt sudden pressure hitting her chest. Too much. Too fast. Her reflexes moved so quickly, during that moment that she failed to recall what she had done nor the moves she'd used on him._

 _"Rose!"_

 _The surviving people around her, were shouting a chorus of "No!" around her._

 _"Rose! Oh! My God! No!" her brother, Tony shouted._

 _She heard herself crash to the floor, a moment of intense pain blossomed in her chest as her heart came to a halt. As the darkness claimed her, Rose was vaguely aware of something wet dripping into her eye and down her face._

Rose woke up gasping in her bed. Opening her eyes, she could see the white ceiling and the pink walls of her old messy Powell Estates bedroom. The intense sunlight in her room hurt her eyes. As she gazed sleepily over to her alarm clock that read 11.10, she noticed her chest didn't feel quite right. She carefully, cupped her breasts and squeezed.

"I have no thrupney bits!" Rose squealed, leaping off of her mattress and running to her bedroom mirror.

Rose stood before her dresser mirror and gasped. She was wearing a mock turtleneck soft pink blouse with long sleeves, jeans and her pink converses. She was no longer an adult; she was in her ten, maybe eleven-year-old body and her chest was flat. With an audible groan, she recalled she had not needed to wear a bra until just after her twelfth birthday. Shareen had an overnight sleepover the month previous before it with her visiting cousins, Terry and Michelle during which they had compared their breast sizes within their little group. Rose felt self-conscious that she was built like a lolly stick. One of the cousins had snickered that all she needed was two small plasters for a bra.

"No! I don't want to live through puberty again! Oh! My God! My first menses! Rose shuddered. Her early ones had been so painful and her flows were heavy: countless nights and afternoons, after school of hot water bottles for her cramps, hot lemonade and hot baths with mineral salts, every day during the first year of it. The only bright side was her mum, who neither smothered her nor said anything negative during them and they would have those rare brief moments of true woman to woman sisterhood, between mother and daughter, before reverting back to the status quo of arguments and bickering.

"What the...?" she snapped. Here, she was returned back in time, back at the Powell Estates in her home universe, re-discovering her pre-pubescent body, worried about the size of her breasts and her future – or repeated – experience of early menarche.

"Rose? Are you okay?" Her mum asked uncertainly with a touch of fear in her voice, clearly in disbelief that she was seeing her own daughter in these surroundings – alive. Jackie slowly peaked, around the corner of her Rose's bedroom door.

"Mum?" Rose said with a slight tremble in her own, albeit childlike voice. There was something haunting in her mum's eyes. It came to them in the same moment, when their eyes connected with each other.

" _The Valeyard._ " They whispered together. Suddenly, they were on Rose's pink and white duvet-covered bed, holding each other, sobbing loudly and not holding anything back for several minutes.

"Rose, what happened?"

"What was the last thing you remember?" Rose kept her eyes on her mum, deflecting her own answer.

"I saw you slice off that monster's head off with your sword. When you made that diagonal slice, it sounded just like slicing a melon in half one big move. Right graceful move, like something out of those kung fu movies..."

"Mum!" Rose couldn't help taking note of her squeaky child-like voice, then remembered her body was now a child's body.

"Yes. Right. Now... " Jackie shivered, taking a deep breath before continuing. Rose encouraged her with a nod . "He shot y-your ... your heart out with your own gun, as you sliced his head open."

Rose gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. "Go on..."

"Tony and I were holding ... crying over ... y-y-your ….and … and P-P-P- Pete's b-bod..." Jackie and Rose grabbed each other sobbing to comfort the other at the memory of Pete's death, who had died just minutes before Rose did, taking a bullet, to his head meant for his daughter.

Holding Rose's tiny hand for strength Jackie continued, "Then there was this awful shaking, it felt like the whole building was in a cocktail shaker. Everything moving all around the place, 'twas strange watching furniture moving around like it had a mind of its own, no one could move until it stopped. It was like the quiet of a storm. We turned to look out the glass windows, at the ruins of the city. It was ... was so strange, scary, the smoke and fire, you couldn't look away, even if you wanted to, like a horrible auto mobile accident..." Jackie stopped for a moment, her eyes haunted and distant, searching for the words to describe what happened next.

"It was like the way when you watch, explosions in one of those Japanese anime, Tony..." Jackie paused for a moment. "Ton ... ton ... and you loved to watch on the telly, of buildings and volcanoes blowing up high into the sky. Bright colourful lights expanding upwards and outwards, in growing, spreading columns of flying earth, building pieces, fire and lava coming up out of the ground. The sky turned red and orange, too."

"We ...we ... hugged each other. The second, we realized what was ha-ha-happening..." Jackie started to weep again and put Rose into a powerful bear hug.

"Mum! Mum!" Rose squeaked like a mouse in pain and trying to futility wiggle out of the merciless bear hug. "I'm only ten, maybe eleven years old now."

Jackie let her go and blew her nose on her blue, long sleeve mock turtleneck knit top she was wearing that day. Rose recoiled at the sight of it.

"Sorry, dear. Let me change my top and I'll make us a nice cuppa and we'll talk some more." She left the bedroom, struggling to control her weeping, leaving Rose to her own morbid thoughts.

Fifty-five years since the Doctor had trapped and abandoned her, on Pete's World. Fifty-five years of pain... of... No! No! Rose admonished herself. She would not go down the self-pity road, she refused to feel sorry for herself, for things, beyond her control. The people, who suffered and died because she would not let the... the Valeyard win, knowing it would be far worse for the world, for the universe if he'd been allowed to win.

The big question was who or what had brought her and her mum, not only back in time, but simultaneously across two universes?

 _"We did. My Wolf,"_ the TARDIS replied.

Rose heard something crash and break in the kitchen.

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"Shite!" Jackie yelled.

Rose came running into the kitchen as fast as her short child-sized legs would let her. Her Torchwood training and conditioning had her tiny hands reaching for a gun that used to be at her side in another time and universe.

"Blimey." Jackie shouted with barely contained fear "Where did that voice come from?"

 _"That would be me, mother of my Wolf."_

"Who! What? Who!" Jackie cried, moving around and waving her hands as if an invisible wasp were buzzing around her, itching to attack. "Am I losing it? God! I pray this isn't like the day when your cousin, Rachael lost the plot. They found her standing there at the foot of the stairs, naked as the day she was born at the tube station. She said, God told her to do it and to paint herself..."

"Mum!" Rose quickly assured her, as she moved them from the kitchen to their living room. "It's the voice of the TARDIS."

 _"You are correct my Bad Wolf."_ The TARDIS confirmed.

"You never spoke words directly to me before, today. It was all feelings, buzzes and sometimes images, when I was on ... er ... in ... you ... ugh!" Rose snapped. "You know what I mean."

The women could hear the TARDIS sadly chuckle in their minds. _"True, I can say words, when it's necessary, to someone other than the Doctor. Regrettably, when I needed to do it the most I wasn't able to do it."_

"Meaning?" Rose cautiously said, knowing she wouldn't like the answer. But she wanted to hear the TARDIS admit the truth.

 _"Bad Wolf Bay, when our Doctor abandoned you and the future Valeyard on Pete's World. When you heard me groan on the beach..."_

"You!" Rose head snapped up, glaring into the open space of the flat sitting room, her eyes trying to focus. She was so rarely at a loss for words, she was so weary, angry and sad, not knowing why. So she directed her anger on the time ship.

 _"My Wolf!"_ the TARDIS said, in stern disapproval, so loud it hurt Rose and Jackie's minds. _"I was protesting and begging My Thief, on your behalf, not to do it. Despite what he thought of himself, at the time, he did deserve to be happy, you were good for him, you kept him grounded, when to move ahead, when to hold back, keep himself in check,"_ The TARDIS mournfully sighed. _"He chose to ignore my plea's not to do it, but I was too weak, when I was dropped into Davros's Z-Neutrino energy vortex and crossing the Howling so soon to truly force the issue. I fought him, but he had the Doctor-Donna with him and between them. They forced me to leave you behind on Pete's World."_

Rose said softly, after a moment of silence in the room, "Why was Donna so anxious to push me, into the Valeyard's arms that day on the beach?"

 _"Doctor-Donna didn't want to share the Doctor with you."_

"Slag!" Jackie snarled. Rose had forgotten her mum was there and realised she had been uncharacteristically quiet during this time. Surprisingly, Jackie became silent, again, after her outburst, simply standing there intensely listening.

 _"Donna wasn't jealous of the Doctor's relationship with you. She never saw him as a lover nor a sexual partner. A brother, yes. Sometimes, even a son. She truly saw him as her best friend forever and like so many women she didn't want to share her best friend with anyone, especially another woman. She wanted to stay with him forever and go on adventure after adventure with him. So much like you in so many ways, my Rose."_

"What happened to him ...her after ..." Rose choked. The Valeyard, had only known to a certain point what would happen with the Doctor-Donna, but Rose, suspecting more, begged the TARDIS to confirm her suspicions and put the ghost of Doctor-Donna to her final rest. "Please, I... I... need to know for sure."

 _"When Donna became the Doctor-Donna, her human brain couldn't handle the vast knowledge of a Time Lord conscious; it was overloading her physically human mind. She knew, in order to survive, that the Doctor would have to erase her memories, of her entire time with him and the memory of ever meeting and travelling with him, or she would die from a brain haemorrhage. She was in denial until the very last moment."_ The TARDIS mentally sighed. The two women could feel the sentient ship's regret and sadness in it. _"She begged him not to do it. She didn't want to go back to being an ordinary human again, to return to just being the best temp in Chiswick._

 _"After he erased her memories and locked away her Time Lord mind, he took her home to Sylvia and Wilf and left her behind with her family. It broke both his hearts, his running away and imprisoning you on Pete's World and losing Donna, all within the same hour of leaving you and the Meta-Crisis on the beach. His hearts were burnt to a cinder, an unnecessary, self-inflicted punishment because he felt he didn't deserve any happiness in his life, in any form, where it concerned you and the guilt over what he did to save his best friend's life._

 _In the end, his Tenth regeneration life ended alone, lonely, sadly pathetic and he was so very scared of dying, when it came time for him to regenerate, just as much as he was afraid to live and love."_

Rose could feel empathy for Donna, despite what she and the Doctor had done, giving her 'blessings' to be with the Meta-Crisis, tricking and forcing her to stay on Pete's World. To lose all of those experiences, all her memories of the adventures forced back into an ordinary life was Hell like it had been for Sarah Jane. After tasting the wonders, of the universe and to be sentenced to the slow path, normal life on Earth was living death. She knew the pain all too well. Suddenly, the anger and resentment, Rose had against Donna was gone and she felt only sorrow and sympathy for a woman, who would neither remember her adventures with the Doctor, nor the brief moment, when she was the most important woman in the universe, the Doctor-Donna. She only had forgiveness and a piece of her past, was now simply, in the past

The pain her Doctor must have suffered, she wished she could have been there for him to ease his suffering the loss of his snappy ginger haired best mate.

 _"You prove yet, again why, he's unworthy of you,"_ the TARDIS assured Rose. _"He needs you as his Rock of Gibraltar to keep him in line, my Heart."_

Rose's face and ears turned bright red with embarrassment; she should be pissed off to the hilt and stay that way for good. But she found that she was unable, especially after learning all of this. Yet she couldn't be his personal crutch; he needed to be responsible for himself and his actions on his own.

"Oi! He deserves love just as much as anyone one else in the universe." Rose called out to the TARDIS, before she started to rub her eyes with one hand.

Jackie took her other hand, giving it a gentle squeeze, her mum was misty-eyed as she looked her in the eyes. "Nothing to be ashamed of sweetheart. You have an infinite amount of compassion and a heart so big and great, you can love two universes with everything you have in it."

Rose gasped, her lips puckered like a fish trying to breathe on dry land and her eyes just as round. No! Did she hear her mum say, 'an infinite amount of compassion and a heart so big'?

"Are you my mummy?" The child-woman rasped. If Rose's hand was still adult sized, she would have unintentionally crushed her mum's hand, instead of giving it a just a firm tiny squeeze.

Jackie gave her daughter, a blushing grin. "Yes, And I'm proud of it." The TARDIS giggled in their mind and the pair could feel something like a mental 'hug' from the time ship.

 _"Right,"_ the TARDIS stated, when they separated. _"Girls, we have work to do, plans to make to save our favourite..."_ Jackie growled. _"or our not so favourite, Time Lord and two universes."_

"Not without some more answers," Jackie said firmly. "Rose, I can understand being given a second chance, but why me?"

Normally, Rose would have resented letting her mum take charge of the questioning; but though her body was still full of energy, her mind and emotions were exhausted. Despite the time travel factor, for Rose, she had endured forty hours of straight chaos, mental exhaustion and emotional fatigue. She could barely stand on her own. Though hypervigilant from travelling in time and space, Rose gave into her fatigue, flopping down on the nearby couch.

"Sit like a proper young lady," Jackie snapped. "You weren't raised in a barn."

Rose immediately stood up and properly sat down under her mum's glare. When she glanced up, she saw her mum give her a nod of approval before she refocused, on listening to her mum chatting with the TARDIS.

 _"Your daughter has been through, a great deal of emotional pain as well as the mental and physical abuse, by the Valeyard and leading the fight against him for several years. She needs time to recover, over the heartbreak, the pain, our Doctor and the Valeyard did to her psyche,"_ the TARDIS explained. _"Sorry, for talking to your mother, as if you're not here, my Wolf."_

"No problem," Rose sighed and made a jaw popping yawn, recognizing how knackered she must be to let it slide so easily. When she saw her mum looking at her, it was clear in her eyes, in her posture, she was asking permission to continue on with her chat with the TARDIS without her daughter.

"Sorry. Go ahead without me. It's fine ... fi ... f-f-f-ine." Rose struggled against another yawn before succumbing. "Please, go on without me," she mumbled, weakly waving her hand in the air, before placing and adjusting a sofa pillow, under her head on the sofa arm, intending to just listen in on the conversation. Instead, she almost instantly fell asleep, making soft snoring noises and drooling on the soft cushy cushion, experiencing her first true deep dreamless sleep in decades.


	2. Quiet Revelations

_Starting over isn't always a bad thing. The first time around you didn't have the knowledge that you have now. So, that's an advantage. - Sonya Parker_

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Chapter 2

Quiet Revelations

Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth and the Multiverse, Rose thought, as she slipped into her bright pink jimjams with yellow fuzzy trim and hideous shades of green and tan teddy bears all over it. Yuck! What had she and her mum been thinking when they bought it? Either it was in the bargain bins or she was like many kids, at this age, suffering from a spur of the moment desire and lack of good taste. She owned only two sets of jimjams, one set was clean and another set was in the clothes hamper waiting to be washed in the morning. She remembered how money was especially tight during these days in Powell Estates and knew getting a new set wasn't possible yet.

Luckily, the TARDIS had sent her back on a Friday; Rose recalled that Shireen and Keisha normally spent weekends with their families. The TARDIS explained that it was May 1995. Rose was nine-years old and still in Year Four. It helped having a couple of days to digest what she learned, as she did not just have responsibilities to Prime Universe, but many other parallel universes as well. When she had jumped across the Howling in search of the Doctor's dimension to warn him about the Darkness, she helped several universes, at crucial fixed points in their own histories and thus, she became a fixed point in the multiverse.

The TARDIS and the Tyler women had 'talked', well... Rose did most of the talking and Jackie would speak her mind, often scolding and rhetorically threatening the spacetime machine. Rose could swear, she could perceive the TARDIS was rolling her eyes and stifling giggles in her head. Questions were asked, explanations were given, the time machine admitted up front that some answers were pending the proper point in their timelines.

Sighing, Rose turned and fluffed her pillows in frustration. They made plans aiming to prevent the Valeyard coming into existence, John wouldn't... No. She wouldn't call him, by that name again if she could help it. The Valeyard. Yes, the Valeyard clearly showed Rose, when she was his prisoner. On a semi-regular basis, he would mind rape her, aside showing her own emotional pain and memories, he revealed many of the Prime Universe Time Lord Doctor's painful, dirty personal secrets, notably the truths about the Time War, his role in the actual fighting, the Final Sanction and his use of the Moment in the genocide of the Daleks and the Time Lords. Surprisingly, Rose quickly mastered, a low-level telepathy and could 'walk through the door of his mind' like Madame de Pompadour had done to a certain degree. But she was stealthier, more careful, softer about digging around in the Valeyard's angry, dark mind.

Sometimes when the Valeyard was showing off his telepathic skill as well as fucking with her mind, she learned a few of his truest and deepest thoughts and feelings for the people around him and in his past. When it came to her second Doctor, he was incapable of dealing his darkest emotions of love, anger or pain; he did his best to ignore the overwhelming sense of loss, his nightmares, night terrors and post-traumatic stress. He was a coward, refusing to take chances with his hearts and would take it upon himself to make decisions for others because he thought he knew what was best for them. Like he had done to his own granddaughter, Susan, when he Aberdeened her out of the TARDIS fearing she was only staying with him out of pity for an old man. During his seventh incarnation, their grandfather-granddaughter ties were renewed, but like the sword of Damocles, it haunted their relationship. Susan disappeared shortly after her part-human son, Alex Campbell, died helping the Doctor's fight against the Daleks, sacrificing himself to save the Earth.

But, was she in a position to pass judgement on her leather Doctor? Like the old Native American saying, _"Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins."_ Rose forgave him, for sending her away in the TARDIS from Game Station 5 to save her from the Daleks and the Delta Wave. He was going to unleash and destroy every living human on Earth to stop the _flying, evil pepper pots_. He thought that it was his last resort. She had helped him find the will to live again, to look anew at the universe with his wounded, ice blue eyes, reminding him of why he loved the Earth and the human race. He did not want the innocence that Rose embodied to die with his heavy hearts, he closed his eyes, waiting for death and silently prayed she would one day forgive him. She could remember the exact moment when she understood and forgave her leather Doctor for what he had done to her years ago on the Game Station.

The escape of her own family - Tony, Pete and her mum, her adopted brother, Jake and the New Preachers, a few were surviving original members, some of their children and one grandchild – haunted her like the events on the Game Station. The elder Preachers, despite their grey hair or bald heads and wrinkly skin, in their sixties or seventies-old men and women, showed the young whipper snappers they could still kick ass and teach them plenty of survival techniques and gorilla tactics. All were part of the underground resistance against the Valeyard. They knew the truth about the ruthless half-Time Lord and his plans for the humans of Earth and the universe, many were directly affected by them. All survivors of the last battle were piled into an overcrowded river raft on the River Tay in Scotland to escape the Valeyard's minions.

The raft was meant to hold ten people, not the seventeen injured people, including an unconscious Jake who was delirious from the last of their morphine and a freshly set and splinted broken leg. The band of seventeen was nearly defenceless, reduced to handheld slingshots, bows and arrows, and lacking supplies, medicine, food or clean water. Luckily, Pete and her mum were healthy: thanks to a big boost of high-tech anti-ageing science, Jackie was in her nineties and Pete was over a hundred years old. Both appeared to be in their sixties. Still, her parents could not at their advanced age endure another capture, imprisonment and the torture sessions, by the Valeyard and his subordinates.

On the brink of losing this battle with the Valeyard, watching as Pete held out his hand to pull his wife into the raft whilst bullets rained down on them, nearly all prayed to whichever deity they believed in at the time; a few Irish Catholics within their group were mumbling their Hail Mary under their breath that none of the Valeyard's snipers would get a lucky shot and deflate their only get away vehicle. Rose couldn't see another way to get the overloaded raft to safety. Above all else the nearly indestructible telepathic alien device in their possession had to stay out of the Valeyard's hands. So Rose made an unilateral decision for everyone on board the raft: she tapped into the telekinetic strength of Bad Wolf to push it away into the wild winter rapids. Knowing that it was a one-way trip, she silently wished it a farewell as she was taken prisoner, driven to her knees by the pain in her head. She cried tears of pain and satisfaction as the Valeyard's men beat her unconscious and enduring the post-telekinetic feedback inducing an explosive, crippling headache.

She recognized what she had done, as well as the most important difference between regret and guilt. Regret was when one did the wrong thing as a result of a perceived no-win scenario. Guilt came later, upon realisation of the wrong action and a desire to fix it. Leather wouldn't have tried pushing her away from him like Pinstripes had done. He would have let Rose decide for herself, if she wanted to leave him for her family, on Pete's World the second time at Bad Wolf Bay. It would have broken his hearts, but he would have left her there, if she had wanted to stay. He would have warmly welcomed her on the TARDIS, if she had chosen him.

During the first and vaguely remembered kiss with her first Doctor, as he absorbed the time vortex and a portion of Bad Wolf into his own body, a part of him hoped that he wouldn't need to regenerate into a new body and keep his current persona, he would tell Rose he loved her. He knew how important it was for humans to hear it verbally confirmed, not just actions, even if they did say actions spoke louder than words.

He would give her a Gallifreyan point star diamond embedded in a natural pink rose gold wedding ring, encased in an Kosian endura gloss to protect it, from damage and normal daily wear and tear and ask her to stay with him for the rest of her forever. Her Doctor planned to enjoy every possible moment of a human life he could with his precious Rose Tyler. They would then face her growing old together. He wasn't afraid of lifelong fidelity, it was truly quality over quantity with him, most importantly, he would let it be her decision, but sadly, her leather wearing Doctor did not survive and was replaced by another Doctor, who was a young looking pretty boy, despite being hundreds of years old, and wore suits with pinstripes.

 _In the back of her mind, Bad Wolf gave a tiny yelp of sadness at this thought._

Unlike Leather, Pinstripe Doctor was neurotic when it came to their future or lack of a future together. He thought in terms of ten, twenty, even a hundred years ahead of it. He worried too much about things that could not be immediately controlled, especially when it came to those he loved. He always worried about what it would do to _him_ , thus in his mind, it was better to have no memories, to warm his cold nights and give him strength during the days of bleak disunion of an intimate relationship with his tiny human. If only he had been willing to talk to her about his fears, his hopes and their possible future or possible non-future. Together.

How dare he make such an important life changing decision without consulting with her on her own life!

Fidelity, especially a finitely limited lifelong fidelity with a Time Lord scared the Pinstripe Doctor to death.

 _In the back of her mind, Rose could hear Bad Wolf give a low growl at this thought._

Damn! Damn, him for choosing to believe she wanted to live a slow day to day life. Yes, she learned the day to day life could be filled with adventures, every day friends and many of her friends were her co-workers at Torchwood, but it should have been her choice. _**"The one adventure I could never have!"**_

Yeah, right.

If she wanted to live a safe life, she would have stayed at the Powell Estates, she would have lived with Mickey eating beans on toast, watching hours of telly, a day, have two and a _bloody_ half screaming kids, just barely making ends meet with two crap jobs between them, trapped in a boring life until her last breath. Instead, she went after the Doctor, demanding answers, refusing to back down, got in his face, made him accountable for his actions, called him out on his indifference like she did in Cardiff, the Gelth and what they wanted to do to dead human bodies. Her leather Doctor admired her plucky human nature, her refusing to quit, even when he tried to frighten her by taking her to see the death of her world; she proved she was able to think, run and keep a cool head in a crisis and was adaptable to various extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional environments. Later he would admit only to himself, when he had grabbed her hand with his, looked straight into her eyes and said, "Run!" Rose Tyler owned his double hearts.

Rose thrived on the risky, dangerous life the Doctor led, addicted to saving the universe, experiencing so many cultures, seeing so many aliens and alien life forms. The adventures and the adrenaline rush to be had on almost a daily basis. Always running with her small hand in his large one, grinning his wide maniac smile as if she was the only one for him, it was as if they were made ... perhaps destined for each other, before the moment they met. Finding out, the fact the 906 years old alien was experiencing love at first sight, for the first time in his life, tickled her... well... pink, the thought amusing her to no end.

She fiercely loved her leather Doctor without bounds, but the pinstripe Doctor had hurt her so horribly, that her love for him was nothing but a dull thudding ache beating in her human heart. How could it be that they were so different, yet at his core, they were the same man, sharing the same psyche? Two sides of the same coin, but ultimately they were not, in the ways that counted. The emotional differences between the two were astounding.

To taste all of the splendours of the universe, only for Pinstripes trying to condemn her to a predictable slow path of marriage, kids, a mortgage and driving a SUV against her will. Her leather Doctor would have shuddered in disgust and anger, if he could have confronted his Pinstripe self. Rose smiled. She could easily see him cursing and punching out his _'pretty boy'_ regeneration, only to repeat the action once the latter regained consciousness. Could she once more trust and love her second Doctor? Would he run and leave her, yet again? Could she ever trust a man whose solution to difficult personal relationships and emotional pain was to run and to keep on running, refusing to face them? The blind faith, and the blind trust, she had in him was gone. It died the moment he left her that final time on Bad Wolf Bay.

Rose knew she was going to travel with the Doctor, on the TARDIS, but the essential issue was, specifically her brown-eyed, vain and arrogant as a peacock, thin as a rail Doctor. When it was time, could she deal with the abandonment issues she had with him? Could she get past her anger, her rage, her pain for what he should have, but did and didn't do, for imprisoning her in another universe with a half-alien creature that became the most amoral man in Pete's World?

Yes, she would love him forever in her heart. She knew she would be _in_ love with her leather Doctor, but would never be _in_ love with Pinstripes. Could she face it, when it was time to lose Leather to Pinstripes? These questions haunted her as she fell asleep, letting the white noise of the sitting room television, where Jackie was watching movies and the dull yelling of the neighbours and their own televisions coming through the wall lull her to an uneasy sleep.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

Rose woke up with a start, her heart beating like a little scared bird in her chest, her bed sheets soaked with sweat in the aftermath of a dream of a golden wolf chasing her through the phantoms of an empty space station. It was like the one where they observed Reinette from the blood and smoke of the fifty-first century. As is often the way it is with dreams and nightmares, it evaporated in the next instant of waking. Looking at the alarm clock, on her night stand, she saw that only a couple of hours had passed since she fell asleep.

She could hear the loud cheesy, bland comedy-drama, romance movie soundtrack, in her bedroom, through the thin walls of their apartment that her mum was trying to watch, centring around, a group of fuck buddies optimistically looking for happily ever after. Rose smiled. Jimmy Stone, the cannabis wanna-be a rock star wanker would not get her virginity a second time. This time her knees would stay locked, there would be no bloody Noosh and Amsterdam, no eight hundred quid in debt working, at Henrik's to repay her mum. Yes, she would get a job as a shop girl there, but under different circumstances and on her terms. Maybe an internship, this time around.

As for Mickey, they would be and stay best mates for life, it shouldn't be too difficult to get him to accept it, by nipping his crush in the bud and keep their friendship alive. She loved Mickey like an older brother: she always had and she would still want him to be part of her life, but dating and marriage were out of the question. He deserved to have a life long mate, who could love him the way, he deserved and a wife, who deserved him, in return like Martha had been. Someone who would love him with everything she had liked his Gran used to... Oh. No.

Mickey's Gran.

This was going to painfully tough on her, even her mum, knowing what was going to happen to his Gran. One day in the near future, she would trip and fall down the steps on the loose carpet, just two small steps, to answer the knock at the front door, that Mickey ignored, for a delivery and die. The TARDIS revealed without telling too many details. Mickey had a destiny to fulfil, too. First, on Pete's World with the Cybermen as well as his important role in setting up Torchwood there. Then, with Martha, he had very important work to do in the Prime Universe, work that their great-great-granddaughter would continue in ensuring the survival of Earth and the human race in the twenty-second century. Maybe, she should just get a shovel and start digging a deep hole, she thought cynically; she felt like she was in over her head in deep shite with all of these responsibilities to the Prime Universe, Pete's World, the Multiverse and the Time Vortex.

When she heard feet running, from the sitting room to the lavatory and heard violent throwing up. The little blonde rose hurriedly from her bed and, before she knew it, she was holding a cold wet compress to her mother's forehead.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

After Rose had gone to bed for the night. Jackie Tyler crammed raspberry and strawberry Jammie Dodger biscuits, in her mouth between sips of tea, crying jags and blowing her nose into soggy tissues, not bothering to concentrate on a mediocre movie on the telly. She just wanted something to fill the silence in the flat with to hide her sobs, from Rose. Luckily it turned out that her past self had just bought several packets, yesterday, according to the cash register receipt, she found in the kitchen trash bin. In Pete's World, when they found themselves trapped in their home world, they had neither strawberry nor raspberry dodgers; instead, they were forced to choose between blueberry, gooseberry and - worse of all - those God forsaken awful cheesecake dodgers that tasted like someone had blown dry cigarette smoke, out of their arse in them.

When Jackie had wistfully mentioned to Pete, how much she missed her favourite store bought flavours, he went out and bought the company for her birthday present, under the Vitex Corporation name, of course, and promptly ordered the factories to mass-product the raspberry and strawberry biscuits, along with the standard flavours and he surprised her with the first ones off the line, on her birthday. She could remember how big Tony's eyes widen with glee when she gave him the first raspberry biscuit, out of the first package. The way his face lit up when he t-t-tasted... _Tony_! Jackie barely made it to the toilet in time to vomit.

She felt a wet, cool compress to her head and was handed a small glass of water to rinse out her mouth. Looking up into her adult daughter's eyes, in her now nine-year old body, marvelling at the now ageless woman who had suffered and endured so much, who survived mental, emotional and physical hardships crossing the Void and the multiverse, and years later endured constant, brutal abuse and mind rape by the Valeyard's hands. She was a true survivor in every sense of the word. Rose would always be her little girl, no matter how old (or young) she was.

"Remember Mum," Rose softly said, while wiping her face and chin and finally handing the cloth to her to finish it. "You and Pete are a fixed point in our timeline."

"Tony." Jackie snuffled.

"The TARDIS said, Tony is a fifty-fifty flexible time point." Rose quietly admitted. She didn't want to hurt her mum, by promising her baby brother would come back to life. "We'll face it when it finally comes."

Jackie meekly nodded her head, wobbling a bit as she stood up, finished drying the water off her face and rinsed her mouth out one more time, into the sink.

"A cuppa of tea?" she comforted her mum. "Okay?"

"Rose," Jackie said, suddenly pulling her into a bear hug. "I love you."

She nearly cried, when her daughter stood still for a moment, before giving her a slow parting hug in return. Rose took a small step back, smiled shyly and gently wiped a tear off of her mum's cheek with her thumb, before letting go and heading for their kitchen to make their tea. Her woman-child gave her such a sad knowing look with eyes that had seen too much. Rose was strong, sometimes too strong, during their years in Pete's World, sadly she needed to be to endure and survive the Valeyard.

Rose was Jackie's daughter; she was brave, was witty and smart mouthed, depending on the situation, dependable, loyal to a terrible fault and so very clever. Rose earned her A-Levels, both to fulfil a mandatory Torchwood requirement and for the sake of her own education and her new found insatiable curiosity in learning all she could. Between leading Torchwood team missions and her research into finding a way back to her original universe and her Doctor, the University permitted her to take their fast track program and within three and a half years, Rose had finished her Master's degree in Engineering Physics with sub-specialities in Chemistry and Business.

She earned three black belts in Taekwondo, Aikido and Shotokan as well as attaining proficiency in kick-boxing, Parkour and gymnastics. She learned to fluently speak and read fluent French, German, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese as well as several other languages and taught herself to read Ancient Greek and Latin for her studies, learned to live in the public eye as the Vitex heiress and she expected nothing to be handed to her on a gold platter. Pete was so proud to call her his daughter, sometimes he would embarrass her in front of press and society bragging how smart she was. Once Pete got carried away and shamelessly bragged, at a charity event, in front of the press with Rose by his side, how a few of her teachers said she was a genius and claimed she was a role model for all young would be women scientists on the level of Madame Curie, Emmy Noether and the Marquise du Châtelet. Rose turned such a brilliant red, head to chest, contrasting with her strapless yellow evening gown. The gossip rags had a field day with it, briefly calling her the Pink and Yellow Blushing Rose in the headlines. When the pandemonium died down, to save on ink some simply referred to her as the 'Blushing Rose' in their headlines, whilst others praised and worshipped the Renaissance Rose. All before the stars started to disappear in the sky and her work - the real work - on the Dimension Cannon began.

Yet it now shamed Jackie how she treated her daughter before coming to Pete's universe and it was a painful stabbing feeling in her heart and gut. She never understood until that moment, how deeply Pete's violent death had affected her. She had clung to her Rose far too hard, just to keep her last piece of her only true love Pete, by her side forever. She had unhealthy emotional boundaries, refusing to give her teenage daughter, her own personal space.

How hard she would do everything and anything to smother and shatter Rose's yearnings for a better life, travel and adventure.

 _"You can't do it, you're not as clever as you think you are!"_

 _"Where do you think of these fantastical notions, out of your arse?"_

 _"You don't have what it takes to pass your A-Levels in Business or in Physics, you're out of your league there, you prat."_

Once, after a particularly heated argument, Jackie shouted:

 _"Don't you dare get airs and graces around me, Missy! You're nothing, but a chav and you'll always be a chav from Peckham. So consider yourself lucky, if you can scrape up enough for a vacation trip or a weekend getaway once in a great while, but you'll always come back to where, you belong to the Council Estates."_

Jackie would discourage Rose from applying herself when it came to her schooling and her homework studies. She would undermine her self-confidence at every turn until to her shock, when Rose was sixteen, she rebelled, dropping out of school to run off with a wanna-be super rock star, pot smoking, Jimmie 'Wanker' Stone, who wasn't willing to work for it. He only used Rose like a convenient fuck doll and a twenty-four hour cash machine. Whilst away, Rose endured several weeks of verbal and emotional abuse, in addition to being his occasional punching bag, humiliating her in front of his friends and before public audiences, before the band would start playing on stage until finally in Amsterdam, she caught him in bed with that slag, No-Nooshie? Mooshie? No matter... the manky slag. Despairing, embarrassed and broken, she returned to London eight hundred quid in debt with a black eye and an enormous fat lip.

Taking advantage of her misery and lack of self-esteem, Jackie encouraged her to take the most menial shop jobs like Finches to keep her from developing airs and graces and keep her down instead of Henrik's department store, which had been a step up from the butcher's shop in her eyes. She warned Rose not to trust her gut feelings, when it came to men, all while pushing her hard toward Mickey. Mickey, who had a serious infatuation with Rose since she was a baby. Sadly, she knew before the Doctor came into their lives that Mickey would just be a mechanic in a garage, just scraping by on his pay check whilst pissing away, any extra money would be spent in the pubs on drinks and unhealthy food, instead of saving it to start up his own car repair garage, he often talked about. Mickey was a safe bet on being a life long Powell Estates resident. The guilt and self-reproach over crushing her daughter's spirit ebbed painfully in her memory and soul. How thoroughly she had turned Rose into a prisoner of the Powell Estates. Peckham was her prison yard and Jackie was her often deliberately cruel, sometimes brutal prison warden. Any attempt to see or visit the world outside, was equal to an escape, to be viciously punished until she screamed and pleaded for mercy.

Using wads of bog paper, Jackie wiped away tons of fresh tears and snot into it. While sobbing and blowing her nose very loudly, grateful that Rose would mistake it for losing everyone they had known in Pete's Universe, especially Tony. When at long last she finished crying, what she hoped would be the last tears away for now. She realized something else: self-enlightenment neither guaranteed inner peace nor tranquillity. This self-enlightenment crap was complete bollocks, it was like getting buggered and Jackie Tyler clearly remembered what being buggered felt like.


	3. Back To School

...going back to school will be the death of me. - Anonymous

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

Chapter 3 Back to School

In her Year Four class, Rose quickly learned to keep a pleasant face in front of everyone and an iron will in place, at all times, in front of her teachers, her current school friends, Shareen and Keisha and the other children. She turned in her completed homework and aced exams to the shock of her class teacher, Miss Evans.

Before she was an indifferent, unruly student and slowly growing worse over time, her sudden quiet behaviour, showing respect to all teachers and school authorities raised more than a few eyebrows. Adults shared puzzling glances, some asking themselves how long it would last, but didn't mind the break from the usual mouthy brat.

Shareen and Keisha started to give her suspicious glances, along with her other schoolmates as the week went on and they whispered with the others behind her back. It eased a little when Rose helped them finish their homework quicker, whilst sitting in their favourite chippy. However, she didn't do it for them. She wasn't going to give in and do it in order to keep them liking her. She merely guided them in how to do it so that they could do it for themselves, later on. When asked questions, by anyone what was going on with her new attitude, she easily deflected them away, either by changing the subjects to other topics like the latest boy bands, clothes and the latest gossip in Powell Estates and other students or ignoring questions them altogether.

Rose was bored out of her mind; every school subject was too easy. Having no real challenges made school life tedious with her postgraduate education and skills. Primary school learning was boring the first time around, but now ... ugh! Worse, she had forgotten how superficial children were, at this age, the passing of notes, giggles about boys and gossip within the classroom and the entire school. Mentally, she was silently screaming, 'Let me out! Let me out! I'm trapped in a school full of tiny muppets!' And she often found her eyes and her mind wandering to the windows and the sky. It was a great time to practice her mediation techniques to help pass the time. While the teacher lectured the classroom, Rose stayed just aware enough to know when it was time to take part in her class.

Yes, she knew she wasn't behaving like a nine-year old, but like a little adult. Rose just didn't have it in her to pretend to be a child. Her naivet and innocence was long gone; it was just as well she couldn't pretend, even if she had wanted to try because she didn't have it in her do it. Her emotions twisted and turned within her, but she couldn't feel them. It was like her mind, her body and her emotions were disconnected and she was merely going through the mere motions of living in a deep hazy, boring dream.

Some of the students started to pick on Rose on the second day for no longer hiding, how clever she really was. The vulgar names and filthy crude taunts grew, during the week, when the adults weren't around. They simply rolled off of her back, she'd heard far worse, in her previous life, sometimes there wasn't one filthy swear word in it, but would hurt far, far worse than straight out vulgarity.

Enos Wilde, a boy, from another class, was the leader in encouraging the students to physically and verbally bully Rose on the school grounds and even in class. Suddenly there were students mysteriously falling down to the floor and the playground pavement, bumps on foreheads appeared and black eyes, claiming they were 'accidentally' hit by footballs and empty wing seats during playtime. Some were hobbling with painful shins, crushed toes and had aching arses that hurt when they sat down; others had sore fingers, wrists or a shoulder.

One boy claimed he got his black eye, when he opened the classroom door too fast and carelessly and he refused to change to his story. Skinned knees, a couple of busted noses, all the students insisted they had tripped over their own two feet, hit walls, slipped on the floor, bumped into doors.

On two different occasions, a girl stumbled out of the girl's lavatory with wet, messy hair and soaking wet clothes and a fat lip, followed out by their subdued cliques.

Rafe, the janitor would show up with a large mop, his rolling mop bucket and a small grin on his face to clean up the blood smears on the floor, lockers and walls. His part-time assistant, Huey would follow him with a ladder in case, they needed to climb up to the ceiling. Again. That week they had to pull out several knives, switch blades and on one occasion a sharpened spoon was pulled out of the cheap ceiling panels. Occasionally, windows had to be replaced, some broken by rocks, one time Rafe couldn't help note how the one natural stone had nearly been crushed to powder. He knew his stones well enough to know how strong of a hand it took to break it and he shuddered.

He would watch Rose walk down the hallways and like many janitors, he was ignored until needed. No one paid attention to him in the hallway. Rafe could see how high strung the tiny girl was waiting for the next attack by her schoolmates, her jerky movements, the way she tilted her head trying to sense someone coming up behind her. He confided to Huey, he had strong suspicion something bad had happened to the girl and she was suffering the effects of PTSD. He had seen it more than a few times during his military years in the Middle East. This girl was a wound up too tight spring and she was bored. High strung and bored. It was a deadly combination, and when she finally blew up, it would be Krakatoa-like.

Enos, the soon-to-be former leader of the 'Let's bully Rose Tyler' movement, was walking to a table to be with some of his friends, his food tray held at chest level, thinking about his favourite football team Arsenal and their latest victory against the reviled Manchester United. When Rose suddenly turned around, in her lunch table bench, her legs swinging out into the aisle, she 'accidentally' tripped him and he fell face down into his food tray, covered in cheese broccoli and mashed fish fingers, on his face and the top half of his shirt.

Oh! My God! I'm so sorry, Enos! Rose said, in a sweetly patronizing voice. She immediately bent down with napkins to wipe the mess off of his sputtering face. He yelped. When she placed her hand behind the nape of his neck to hold his head firmly with a sharp neck pinch and a shot of pain went down his shoulders, his back and finally down to his toes causing his feet want to curl up underneath him, but he stayed in place. Steadily wiping the congealing cheese sauce and broccoli bits good and hard out of his eyes and nose, This stops now! Rose harshly hissed in his right ear. Her hiss was so sharp it hurt a nerve in his ear, causing him to painfully flinch. The next time, there will be blood, your blood, if you don't stop the others, I'll hold you personally responsible and you will be paying a visit to A and E. Now. Nod your head, if you understand what I said?

He looked up into her eyes and saw something in her eyes like the eyes of a street smart, street toughened stray dog. He shivered at the feral look in Rose Tyler's eyes that made him think of a wolf. He instantly vigorously shook his head like a bobble head doll, indicating that he understood her warning just before the Headmaster Holden Cummings, the school nurse, and Rafe, the janitor with a slight grin on his face arrived to clean up. Enos quickly insisted it was really his fault that he slipped and had tripped over his own two feet because his shoelaces were untied. The adults glanced down at his shoes and saw they were slip ons.

Hopefully, This is the last accident here. Headmaster Cummings casually said, but his eyes said it ended now or face an official office visit and parents would be called in. Then, Enos was allowed a legitimate excuse to go home early since his clothes and hair were such a mess.

Headmaster Cummings, the teachers and the staff were well aware of what was really going on, behind the scenes, when the grown-ups weren't around of how Rose was handling her bullies. They would leave it alone, unless someone was truly hurt or foolish enough to do something in front of an adult. Many knew how it was in school and silently acknowledged to themselves, no one dared talk. There were times that children had to work things out, between themselves. They understood the harsh realities of the Estates and knew Rose needed to take care of herself or else she would be endlessly bullied, by the children at the school.

For Rose, her PE classes and her gymnastics were a true relief to the ennui of primary school life. During her first PE class, she noted how she should do more training and conditioning her small body for the future. She was in good shape, in her current body when it came to her gymnastics, but she knew she could do far better and this time she was going to earn that gold medal. They would find a way to fund her coaching for it.

Friday afternoon at long last came and at 3:15 p.m. The final school bell of the day rang out much to everyone's relief.

Rose Tyler, may I have a few moments of your time? Miss Evans asked, as everyone stood up to leave.

Yes, Miss Evans. As she stood in front and the side of the desk out of the way to let the other students walk out of the room. Rose wondered, if she was in trouble, despite her good behaviour in class this week, by the tone of her teacher's voice. The few remaining students, in the classroom gave her raised eyebrows, one openly smirked, it was clear they thought she was in trouble.

When the last one was out, Miss Evans closed the schoolroom door and sat down at her desk chair, enabling her to look Rose at her eye level.

Rose, I couldn't help noticing how quiet you've been this entire week. Is everything all right? Did something happen, at home that brought about this change?

No, Miss Evans everything's good at home. She hadn't seen this coming. She should have known these alterations in her personality would be noticed by everyone including the adults. There would be questions and people would be curious about the changes going on with her behaviour and attitude. They were so focused on adjusting back into their old world, reacquainting themselves with their former era, figuring out what exactly was going on in their lives like, who were and weren't their friends, where they were in old current relationships and enemies at this time.

Even her mum's friends, their neighbours and the men of Peckham had noted the changes in Jackie's new quiet behaviour and her no longer hanging out in pubs, outrageously flirting and hitting on the men until the first one said, yes.

Not that I'm complaining, but I find your sudden change quite shocking. What caused this practically overnight?

Last Friday, Rose quickly said, surprised how easily it came out. Mum and I was walking to the grocers, after school and a maniac lorry driver, almost ran us down.

It was loosely based on a real lorry attack on her in Pete's World, as mother and daughter stood in the front line of a legal public demonstration to end the Peckham curfew and demolish the military barriers and checkpoints. Pete and the breathtakingly handsome teenage Tony were on the sidewalk, talking to the news media and making their point clear they supported tearing down the walls surrounding Peckham. When Abel Spencer, a furious, bitter man, well-known to have a short temper and held a grudge for often imagined slights, amongst his family and his few friends, blamed Rose Tyler for personally ruining his life. Revved up his lorry's engine pushing, by the side of the side road blocked off for the parade and ploughed thorough cars and ruined the side of another lorry, waiting for the parade to move on.

Abel was angry, his ex-fianc e, Lulu Quinn, a rather mousy young woman had dumped him and successfully moved on with her life with another man. Three years ago, she had decided to take the free community intense education fast track classes, available to Peckham residents and others, financed by the Rose Tyler's Education Foundation, headed by Rose Tyler, to get her A-Levels and technical degrees in accounting and office management. Six months into the program, Lulu announced, in front of his parents, his sister and two brothers, during Sunday dinner, in Abel's parents' home. As she plucked off her engagement ring and shoved it into his mother's awful lumpy mashed potatoes, she proclaimed that she was fed up with his verbal abuse about her weight, looks and intelligence, his whining how everyone and everything in life was against him. Fed up with his controlling, self-important ways. Even if he was a successful high-earning lorry driver, in the personality department, he was still a major league mother fuckin' cheating bastard, too. Her teachers, tutors and school counsellors confidence in her success and her hard work in school showed she had a brain and even if she was pudgy and average looking. She deserved better than him and left. A few years later, Lulu became engaged to a self-made businessman, Phil Edison, a former resident of Peckham, inspired by Pete Tyler's success, who operated a successful toy and collectibles store and had successfully left the council estate. She had met Phil through the Tyler education classes, he had been her accounting tutor. It wasn't love at first sight for either one, it had simply grown quietly and naturally, over tutoring sessions, casual chats, leading to dates, into a relationship and finally to their engagement.

Abel held Rose Tyler personally responsible for it. Lulu wouldn't have left him, if it hadn't been for her bloody 'Key to Curing Poverty is Education' Foundation campaign . She didn't have airs and graces until she watched that BBC Special centring on Rose Tyler, her charity works and her 'There's no such thing as an ordinary human' speech. His Lulu knew her proper place as long as she did, what was expected of her. Everything was fine with their relationship. If not for Rose Tyler, Lulu wouldn't have left him for Phil Edison, a skinny, short, bald man and former Peckham resident. Peckham! Lulu falls for a dull Peckham man. It was no matter, if he worked his way out of the counsel estate and was opening a second store soon. Once a Peckham chav, always a chav. He came from good, hard-working Croyden stock. He worked hard and owned his own independent lorry, yet she preferred someone from the filth of Peckham? So what, if Edison treated her like the bloody Queen. He had treated Lulu very well as long as she did things his way. He didn't lose his short fuse, didn't go off and didn't have to let her know who is in charge. He did miss her little giggles of happiness and being there for him. Abel wanted her to take care of his parents and put up with their nagging, instead of them directing it, at him. He couldn't understand why she refused to move into his place and kept her own bed sitter.

Learning that Rose Tyler and her family were leading the campaign to end the military blockade and curfew on Peckham and convinced that his personal problems would be solved and things would go back to normal in his life, he plotted to get rid of the Blushing Rose, by running her down and, if he was lucky, her mum with his lorry during the demonstration parade. He managed to get his lorry close enough to them on live television, taking out several cars and another lorry, to reach her. Enraged when he missed and clipped another demonstrator instead, he kept racing his truck, up and down, the street, chasing Rose. It ended when a Rose and a police officer managed to grab and cling to different side doors of his lorry. She punched, then pulled a stunned Abel out of his cab and to the ground whilst the officer turned off the engine. One died on site, two others died later from their injuries, and twenty-five others were injured to varying degrees. Abel found himself, serving twenty to life in prison. For the rest of his life he wondered, what he did so wrong that he deserved such a long prison sentence with criminals. Some were from the Powell Estates and upon learning of his dislike for chavs, and Peckham made his life miserable there.

A week after the lorry attack the curfew was formally lifted, residents were free to come and go as they please, on Powell Estates without worrying about curfew and identity checks. Thirty days later, the first of the blockades was torn down in front of live television cameras and reporters.

Miss Evans was gobsmacked, concern for Rose was on her face. Blimey! Is everyone okay? So this is why you were ... so... quiet this week.

Yes, ma'am, Rose gave her a nod of her head. I decided I wasn't going to hold myself back on anything, any more and give one hundred and ten percent to my education. I want to be my own person. I want to be someone and do important things with my life.

Miss Evans studied Rose's face, for such a tiny girl compared to other children of her age. Last week, she was a future ABSO being sent to the Headmaster's office, sometimes detention twice a week, just for the teacher to get anything done in the classroom. Before this, Rose's eyes and face had been increasingly indifferent and slowly hardening as time went on, caused by the hard life Peckham did to its residents and especially to the dreamers. Now when she looked into those eyes, she saw a woman-child, who had seen too much, knew too much, but she could also see there was a fire burning within her that had not been there. Now she wanted more out of life than a life of just another working poor chav, a life of a shop girl, and if she was lucky, marry a man with a little better than a minimum wage job, piss money away at the pubs, have a couple of ankle biters and grow old, fat and bitter together until the day they died.

Rose's good conduct, her perfect test scores and her homework completed on time and equally perfect, her two in class essays were flawless and done within minutes of the assignments, whereas before, she would only do half of her essay and part of her homework, on the good days. Miss Evans had noticed that Rose paid just enough attention in class in the right amounts, at the right times, before drifting back into her own private world. When she had nothing to occupy her, instead of the passive-aggressive attitude, she used to display, she showed boredom. Most of all, she paid special attention in math and science. Could it be?

She watched her student's eyes carefully. Have you decided what you want to do with your life?

A Ph.D. in Engineering Physics, Rose said with no hesitation.

She hadn't been expecting that answer. It instantly struck a chord in Miss Tracy Evans heart, she had seriously taken physics and working on a teaching degree, intending to be a physics teacher in a technical or secondary school until one of her physics teachers, in her second year of university, a female professor, Professor Maud Chandler, decided she didn't like her. She later learned that Chandler hated other female physics students and would pick one or two special individuals to intimidate throughout their entire stay at Exeter. The longer they endured it, the more pressure she would apply on them until they either graduated or she broke them into leaving uni. Later, she found out the Professor had been reprimanded for her bullying, when she had picked on a woman, who refused to take it, fought back and won. Though the Professor quietly resigned, it was too late for Miss Tracy, who had switched universities losing credits in the process and she had decided to take the safe route by becoming a primary school teacher. Her self-confidence and nerves were shattered, she needing years of professional counselling to help her deal with the nightmares and the deepest personal insecurities that the bitch had instilled in her.

Something in the way, Rose Tyler's eyes reminded her of her Nana Connell's eyes appeared when she thought back on all of the wounded, permanently maimed or dead soldiers, the dead being sent back home, if there was enough to send back to their families for a proper funeral and a few of her friends lost on the battlefields of World War II as a nurse on a field medical team. It had broken her Nana's heart when she gave up on her physics degree and settled for a primary school teaching degree instead of the secondary-school teaching degree. Nana had been the only one, in her family, who'd believed in her, encouraged her to go to university and get her degrees in physics and teaching.

Rose, she said while reaching for paper and pen. May I have some more of your time? I would like to write out some equations and watch as you answer them here.

Sensing this would be a pivot point, Rose didn't hesitate nodding in agreement, placing her school bag on the seat of one desk, before sitting at another one with only a pen in her hand. Rose watched as Miss Evans quickly wrote out the equations on several pages in a new, unused notebook and not tearing them out.

When her teacher handed her the notebook, Rose saw the math and physics were all university level equations. Miss Evans had just one question on the top of every page for her to fill out. Her gut instinct said, if she did this right, her whole school life would change overnight, however she could lose her old childhood friends, Shareen and Keisha for good and leave her primary school behind. If she deliberately failed, she would be stuck on the slow educational path, full of boredom, immature peers and mediocrity for years to come. Would her old friends would like her, keep their little clique intact and just be a face in the crowd or would they stay friends on her terms? If they left her because of it, not only were they not her real friends, she could and she would make new friends, in her new life; in her new timeline, she would meet new people, visit different places, make her own path until it was time for her brusque Northern Doctor to appear.

Rose Marion Tyler wasn't a coward.

Bad Wolf wasn't a coward.

She was going to go for it, aiming and getting the golden ring, not settling for the brass ring, on the merry-go-round and make the most of this new life, this new timeline, this time around, before the Doctor comes into her life. A second chance.

The only thing slowing Rose's handwriting the answers, was her hand cramping from holding the pen so hard. She wrote faster than the ink feeder could keep up with her writing, she paused to flex her hand cramp and let the ink catch up with the nib. She placed small deliberate mistakes, here and there to keep from appearing too advanced. When she wrote the last math symbol down on the last page, Rose lifted her head up, saw Miss Evans staring at her with her mouth agape in amazement and shock. Her teacher turned her body to glance at the school wall clock, hanging over the class eraser board behind and over her head. Rose saw she had finished her test in sixteen minutes.

Miss Evans stood and walked over to her desk, taking the notebook Rose handed her. Her eyes grew bigger the more she read. Just reading three of the answers, she read, were almost perfect, Rose hadn't hesitated for a second in writing her answers out, except to set her pen down to flex her hand before continuing on.

No wonder why she was difficult in class, before this week, it wasn't indifference, it had been boredom, all along. She dumbed herself down to hide her true intellect and made trouble in order to fit in with her mates and the other children. Miss Evans knew, by her own childhood experiences and as a teacher, how cruel children could be to those who were different, the gifted, the slow learners and those standing apart from the herd; all because of almost getting hit by a lorry driver, Rose was no longer holding herself back.

Um ... That'll be all for now Miss Tyler. She could see the confusion and struggle of emotions on her teachers face. Rose recognized the woman didn't know what to think, of her student's new found talent in physics. I'll ... I'll see you Monday morning. Be sure to have your homework assignments done and turned in. Thank you.

You're welcome, Miss Evans. Rose gave her teacher a nod and a smile and quickly left the classroom.

The teacher sat there, listening to the clock ticking and its hands moving, in the now quiet room. Something had murmured, in the back of her mind to give Rose uni level equations to solve, her instincts said the young girl could handle it. Now she had the proof in her hands, before her very eyes. What to do next for this clearly gifted child? Listening to the soft sing song voice in the back of her mind to guide her on what to do next for the child. Yes, she would be Rose's advocate, help her go as far as she could in this limited life. If Rose Tyler, a tiny slip of a girl from Peckham was willing to do the work and make something of her life, she could do it, too.

After, her talk with the Headmaster about Rose Tyler and get her IQ tested by the school psychologist. Miss Evans suspected the girl could be suffering from PTSD caused by the lorry driver and since she didn't have direct connections with a university, ring a couple of old mates, who were still in the physics field and see if they could help her, find a university physics professor to evaluate Rose. Afterward, she would stop by the uni, see if they had any open physics lectures still open and take a class or two, during the summer break. She could easily imagine her Nana Connell's eyes lighting up, when she told her, she was going back to the university and finishing her physics degree and get her teaching certificate to teach secondary school.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

What's going on? Are you in trouble with Miss Evans? Shareen suddenly asked Rose. Keisha glanced from Rose to Shareen and then, back to her, nodding in agreement. The girls had been walking silently to the chip shop and do their homework assignments together.

Yeah, you've been dodging the question, all week long. What's going on with you and your mum? Keisha asked. Everyone on the council estate is talking about it.

They stopped walking when Rose did and the three of them glanced subtly at each other. She knew this would happen. Eventually. Rose sighed and told her friends the story she gave Miss Evans. As expected, they sharply inhaled and asked the expected questions, for a moment she was distracted from the conversation, she was nodding and saying, yes and no, automatically.

She had spotted a group of four young toe-rags, two were pimply, skinny blokes and one unmemorable bint, who never took their A-levels and wasted their days in front of the telly during the day, playing Grand Theft Auto for hours, getting stoned and at night at the pubs pissing away their dole money on ale, instead of paying their rent and utility bills. The fourth loser member of their little group was Alfonso 'Big Al' Almond, the leader of the numpties with dim, hateful brown eyes, built like a fire hydrant body, short brown hair with a natural wave in it. He tried to straighten his hair with tons of hair gel into a nearly solid helmet. His growing pudgy gut protruded out from his jeans, caused by eating too much fried food, beans on toast and drinking ale. A wannabe ladies' man, who struck out, almost every time. Many women would snicker and say, he was all mouth and no trousers and the few who were drunk enough to give him tumble, reported he lasted less than ten seconds and that was before he could lower his pants.

An otherwise forgettable bloke who only stuck out in distant memory as a laughable footnote, who the locals recalled at the pub when they wanted a good laugh. In the near future, in one ugly pub fight, he refused to take no, for an answer, by a pretty woman accompanied by her current boyfriend. Usually she knew how to get rid of losers and she had properly put him in his place, in front of witnesses. When a drunk and stoned 'Big Al' suddenly backhanded her, stunning her and her boyfriend had to step in and a fistfight broke out. In front of the pub patrons and the cops, Al blubbered and sobbed the reason why he was so mean and pissed at the world and a loser with the ladies: He had a tiny willy. He dramatically showed the cops and the other pub patrons the proof by dropping his trousers and pants in front of everyone.

It would haunt him for years, especially when it made the honourable mentions list on Britain's Dumbest Criminals , though the names and identities were altered to protect Nature's incredibly thick. Everyone in the Estates knew who the real man was. The series named it, 'The Peckham Wee Willy Defence'.

He was in a pissy mood, Rose speculated that he must have hit on a woman and she turned him down. Now he wanted to take it out on an innocent bystander to make himself feel good and in charge again.

Al called out startling everyone, including Keisha and Shareen in the immediate area. He wanted the attention of the others around the immediate area by seeing him bullying the tiny girl. He'd heard about Peckham's newly discovered little girl genius who thought she was better than everyone else. Being the 'Big Man', he would put her back into her proper place. Well, isn't it, Rose Tyler, He sneered, feeling braver as he saw her two little girlfriends cower and step behind Rose. She looked him in the eyes without flinching nor backing down. Instead, Rose stepped forward a couple of steps, with complete confidence and authority, reminding him of when he had to deal with dead serious cops. Al almost stepped back, before catching himself in time. If your gonna be a smart arse, first you have to be smart. Shock me, say something intelligent. He loudly taunted the dark honey haired little girl.

What's the difference between you and eggs? Eggs get laid and you don't. Rose quipped.

Stupid bint! Big Al snarled.

Well, I could agree with you, but then, we'd both be wrong.

You just said something, we both can agree on.

Everyone stared at the mean tosser for a solid moment, before Al realised what he had agreed to, in front of everyone.

Rose forgot how small and light, she was in her current body. Before she knew it, Big Al grabbed and lifted her off the ground, by her collar, shaking her head back and forth very hard. Any last words, he growled. you ... you ... Then, almost everyone in the immediate area, Shareen, Keisha, the bystanders, even the group slag gasped in horror, when he loudly called her with capital letters, the mother of all dirty words to call a woman, the C-star-star-star word. Rose was shocked and instantly incensed.

Yeah! The tiny she-wolf snarled. I know for a fact, your best friend, John Thomas is very tiny and a piece of dead flaccid meat! Rose Tyler, the Defender of Womanhood called out. Before he could respond, she headbutted him, very hard with her forehead, hearing his nose break with a satisfying crunch and then, hit him in the bollocks as hard as she could with everything she could with her little knee. She recovered quickly on her feet when he dropped her, after which she delivered a sharp blow to his kneecap and shoved him hard onto his arse. Then, for good measure, she kicked him hard in the bollocks three times, before he could move one hand to protectively clutch them in time.

Rose stood, a few steps back from him, her arms akimbo, glaring with everything she had, doing her best to make her height of 110 centimetres and her body weighing a little more than four stones in mass to appear dangerous as possible. There was no way she could afford to let these so-called adults get away with publicly bullying her in front of others. It would never end as long as she and her Mum lived here. It did worry her that she had enjoyed hurting Big Al way too much, but she had to stay focused on the present situation.

His gang had turned quiet during their leader's attempt to bully the recently found out genius girl. They'd been expecting to have some cruel fun, at her expense, planning to join in the 'fun' after Big Al made her cry. Instead, he was on the ground crying,in pain and clutching his bollocks in one hand, in front of them. There was something unearthly about this kid that caused them to jiggle nervously on their feet, glancing between each other, then at Rose, and finally, at not so big Al.

Rose thought she must be doing one of her best menacing wolf-like glares on Al and his suck-ups, for suddenly their eyes focused straight into her eyes and comically widen like anime characters. There was a sharp group gasp, especially the girl, in disbelief at what they were seeing. For a moment she wondered if Bad Wolf was revealing herself to them or doing something to them of which she wasn't consciously aware?

Surprisingly, the two standing blokes grabbed and lifted Al off the ground, the four of them turned and ran away with the numpty between them without looking back. Blimey! She must have been better with her own version of the Oncoming Storm glare than she thought she would be with this body.

She turned around to see how Keisha and Shareen were doing and immediately found herself lifting her own eyes up and gazing into Jack's eyes!

Jack gave her a serious, sad look, his stance was stiff for just a second, before a warm smile came to his face and he relaxed his posture and held his arms open for her.

Rosie!

Jack! She gleefully called out and leapt into his arms.

I need to breathe, Rose squeaked out, giving him a smack on the back of his head.

It's so wonderful to see you again, after all these years, Rosie, Jack said enthusiastically. We have so much to catch up on.

Who's this hot ... er ... oops! Er ... nice bloke. Keisha piped out in a mouse-like voice.

He's my ... Rose trying to come up with a plausible cover for Jack.

Captain Jack Harkness, I'm Rose's American cousin, on her Grandmother Tyler's side of the family. He said smoothly as he bent down to kiss their hands, his eyes smiling and an eyebrow wiggle and the girls giggled loudly and bright red blushes covered their faces and necks.

Smooth, Jack, Rose admired his research; after the death of Pete Tyler, an only child and an only son, who married a woman his parents didn't approve of, solely for her South London background. They, along with the rest of Pete's extended family had quietly abandoned and ghosted their daughter-in-law and granddaughter, after his death in this universe. None of those on his side of the family offered any help nor wanted a relationship with Rose.

On Pete's World, his parents hadn't disowned him, but they hadn't approved of Jackie either. His dad had dropped dead of a heart attack, before her and the Doctor's first visit there. He had lived to see her dad succeed in his business endeavours and become a multimillionaire; he became a billionaire after the Lumic and his Cybermen were defeated and he took full control of Cybus Industries. His mum had full-blown Alzheimer's with Parkinson's, by the time she was exiled with the Meta-Crisis on Bad Wolf Bay. She had been taken care of in the very best nursing home, with the best doctors and nurses looking after her to the very end. Rose shook herself, this wasn't the right time to go on a memory tangent of the past.

The other adults and children had started to leave when it was clear the excitement was over, many men and boys were murmuring to each other to watch out for Rose Tyler's knee and her forehead and women openly admired the way she put, the now former, 'Big' Al in his proper place. Jack and his cute arse were admired, by women and some men alike. Many men and boys vowed to never mess with Iron Knee Rose Tyler.

Rosie, Jack said with great concern as he bent down to her eye level. Your forehead's bleeding. Do you need stitches?

Rose gently felt her forehead. No, she giggled clearly amused. It's Al's blood, I broke his nose with it.

It's going to be one beaut' of a bump, when it comes out.

Shareen and Keisha lived in homes, on the way to Rose's flat complex. Jack insisted on walking them safely home. The American was his usual charming self and gave her friend's age-appropriate flirts and smiles. Promising he would take them to their favourite chippie for fish and chips, later that weekend, he returned with Iron Knee to spend the evening with Rose and Jackie. Once Shareen and Keisha arrived home, Rose allowed her limp to show without them witnessing it. Jack helped her, support her weight, by letting her hold his hand and lean on him whilst they walked up the stairs to Rose's current home in the Estates.

Rose had barely started to put her key into the door when Jackie tore the door open and scooped her up into her arms. Between her concern and her amusement, when she saw Jack, she squealed and hugged him, after screaming, I can't believe what I'm seeing.

After she'd assured her mum that the blood on her forehead wasn't hers, Rose went to the loo to wash up and put on clean clothes, and Jackie went about making them a cuppa. They waited for her to return before they started their talk. The tea was ready, by the time Rose sat down, at the kitchen table, her leg lifted up on one chair with the ice pack her mum had prepared for her, alternating the ice pack between her knee and forehead so the cold wouldn't get too painful.

Blimey! Jackie smiled, after a couple sips of her tea. I had to disconnect the phone, before you got here. It's all over the Estate, how Rose single-handedly took down a man the size of Goliath with just a single knee to his bollocks. Then, just minutes later, she's taken down a gang of hoodlums, using fighting moves, equalled only by that Bruce Lee, the Ninja bloke 'imself.

Rosie did you proud, Jackie, he grinned. A Tyler woman through and through.

Not so much a woman these days, Jack, Rose's young voice piped, she peeked down, at her flat chest and sighed. There's a lot of first's I'm not looking forward to re-living, in the next few years. Shaking her head sadly, as the 'adults' of their triad, gave her genuine sympathetic nods, trying to hide their tiny smiles behind their tea cups and hiding their giggles with fake coughs, but deep down were shuddering knowing what Rose was going to face when adolescence hit her. Again.

So Jack what happened that you would risk the timelines, by crossing mine? Rose said, changing the mood to serious in an instant.

We were responsible for it. My Wolf. The TARDIS softly chuckled in their minds. Mother and daughter had agreed not to ask, who the 'we' were, in pulling them back, between two universes and in time, for now. It is, My Captain's place to tell you, she said with an affectionate tone. Not mine. So, I will let him tell his own tale. As you will tell him yours. Then, silence.

Jack started and he went on to explain he was really a hundred and fifty years, from their future. There was only so much he could tell them, with everything, starting to become radically different. They agreed the day would come, where everything would diverge from their original timeline and Jack would no longer be able to reliably help, with direct information of the Prime Universe. He'd 'died' in an explosion in 2145 and woke up, on Ellis Island, in New York City, 1892, (for the second time) just after he'd been shot through the heart for the first time. Saying that he was pissed off, was the understatement of any era, the TARDIS waited for him to calm down and explained his Rosie would be needing help. Of course, he would help his 'little sister' in any way he could. Jackie's eyes glistened and wiped away a few tears on her cheeks, the way he said he loved Rose, reminded her of Tony and her son's devotion to his big sister.

Rose knew, some of Jack's story, through the Valeyard, but she was never confident if it was the truth with the way he could and would directly fuck with her mind with his telepathy. Was it just eight days ago that she and her mum were fighting for the survival of their adopted home world and lost?

The room went silent as they sipped their tea and crunched on biscuits. So, what can you tell about happened to the Doctor, after the Crucible and he exiled me, along with his Meta-Crisis, on Bad Wolf Bay? asked Rose.

What followed was an evening of giggles, tears, sobs, laughter, anger, while eating delivered Chinese food, courtesy of Jack, before calling it a night, at 1.15 am. Rose though an adult in a child's body still needed more sleep than the adult's in the room. Everyone agreed to continue on in the morning. Jack slept on the couch with the blanket and pillow given to him, by Jackie.

Jack eyes snapped open and sat up, years of Torchwood and Time Agent training, conditioning him to be instantly wide awake and alert. He heard a small whimper, in the flat.

Rose, he instinctively called out softly. Another tiny whimper of a child filled the air. He was up, quietly moving to her bedroom door and found it opened. Jackie was trying to comfort the girl in a middle of a nightmare.

Rose, darling, her mum stage whispered to the thrashing child. You're safe now. Safe with me and Jack. Let me take care of you, for now.

A soft humming chant-like music filled the air, an alien song whispered verses in an alien language, the adults' eyes snapped up to the other side of Rose's headboard. He noted, how Jackie showed no surprise on seeing the Ood there.

The young Wolf has much to do when she reunites with the Doctor; for Earth, for so many universes and not just ours. She has suffered so much and will suffer and will be dealt more good and bad throughout her eternal life. This is the least we can do for her, the Ood stated. Eventually, she will have to face her fears and her insecurities in her dreams. Mother of the Bad Wolf and her friend, The Captain, but for tonight, let her know the peace that only dreamless slumber can give her.

The Ood with his soft orb secondary brain in his hand, in front of him, crooned the woman-child back into a deep peaceful sleep and remained there. Jackie nodded in agreement and gave the pale creature, a silently mouthed, 'thank you.' Her eyes gave Jack the silent message she was leaving, if Jackie trusted Rose with the Ood, so would he and they left the bedroom.

The first night we were sent back, Jackie explained. Rose was screaming of the Valeyard and a certain personal incident that's not my place to tell you.

Jack gave a nod, in agreement.

By Monday morning, the neighbours were starting to wonder, if something was wrong, perhaps abusing my own daughter. Damn paper thin walls and nosey people ready to call child services on you. Then, that thing pops up that night and sings away her nightmares. But like it says, they can't keep doing it forever for her. I agree. Jackie sighed, shaking her head. I don't know what to do. The only reasonable solution, is to get her bedroom soundproofed, but where do we get the money? Money is stretched tight enough with her gymnastics classes. She earned the bronze medal the last time around and things are dicey, even in the best of times at the beauty shop. It'll be months before we can save something to do a fraction of it and that's if Rose is willing to drop her classes.

Jack gave her a big grin. Oh, I can definitely help out there.

No! We won't accept chari ...

Please, let me tell you first before you reject it. Jack said, giving her his best charming boyish smile. I was saving it for later, after things settled down some with us. Please.

Jackie folded like a house of cards, he looked like a little boy just ... like ... Tony ... did when he was five years old, ready and anxious to share a hot little secret with someone, anyone, who would listen to it. No, she ordered herself, don't cry now. She had to keep calm and carry on for her daughter's sake. Rose had to come first now, before her own pride. Oh, all right. Have your say then.

After a few minutes, Jackie had a facial expression showing she was seriously considering Jack's solution to their money woes. We'll talk to Rose in the morning, she'll have the final say where it concerns her life and her education. 


	4. Kicked Out of School

Author's Note: Reference to the Sheri to Cheri joke mentioned below, is something that happened among some middle and high school girls, off and on in NE Ohio in the 1970's & 80's. When I went to school, there were several Sheri's, Sherry's and Sherri's going there, due a popular Four Seasons song, Sherry back in the 1960's. For whatever reason, some got it in their heads that turning the dot over the little 'i' into a tiny heart somehow turned it into the French nickname of Cherie. Some Sherry's would drop the 'y' and replace it with an "i" and do the tiny heart over it. One of them is a younger sister of mine, Sherry who now denies she ever did it, but I have a old high school notebook of hers that proves it.

I have had two friends, who said the same thing happened at their schools, too.

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Chapter 4

Out of School

Monday afternoon, Rose Tyler stood, in Headmaster Cummings office, along with Jackie standing beside her, in front of his office desk. Two teachers, Miss Alicia Adams and Mrs. Leatha Whitehill stood on the opposite side of the Headmaster's desk, Jackie and Miss Evans stood by Rose. Both sides were trying to stare the other down, in a silent contest of wills.

They were well known strict teachers, who lacked a sense of humour, with adults and, especially young children. Mrs. Whitehill had greying brown hair, tied in a tight bun, a narrow thin body and openly favoured boys over the girls, she simply hated little girls and saw them as vermin to be stomped on and crushed until dead.

Miss Adams was a younger version of her, except she treated all male and female children equally with the same amount of disdain. When she was around children and babies, her little pug nose would often crinkle and sniff the air like a dog and her eyes often creased, as if she was smelling something foul in the air. She almost always appeared to be needing to take a serious dump and beware if she ever smiles at you.

"Watch out if she ever smiles at you," her past students whispered to her new students whispered, between themselves. "It can make the bravest person crap their pants."

They were two of a kind and others only friend in and out of school. Mr. Whitehill was so henpecked, by his wife that he moulted twice a year. Miss Adams hadn't found her future unfortunate victim to marry her, yet.

Rose overheard the two wenches speaking in French, making snide remarks about her. They were standing a little more than two meters away in the cafeteria line and pretending not to notice she was there. It was well known to the teachers, the staff and the students, that the two women thought they were ever so posh, as they had been sent to finishing schools in Switzerland and could speak a sophisticated level of French, German and Italian. Like many British professionals, the majority of the adults in the school had a basic, but rudimentary secondary school level understanding of at least one of those languages. Miss Adams and Mrs. Whitehill took advantage of it, to make rude comments and share nasty gossip, knowing feeding into their superiority complex.

If anyone in maintenance, cafeteria or teaching staff happened to know what was being said between the two women, they wisely kept their mouths shut. It was well known that the "Hagfishes", the epithet they were called behind their backs, by the adults and children weren't afraid to ruin the reputations of those who crossed them intentionally or accidentally. When angered they were experts in ruining reputations, spreading rumours and destroying professional careers and thoroughly relishing the experience of eating their victims from the inside out.

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Jackie was an hour late for her shift, for her job at the Hazel Bell Beauty Salon. She had left first thing in the morning with her daughter, walked her most of the way to the school and headed for the Peckham school district office to start the formal process of taking Rose out of the education system and begin her home-schooling. She went right to work. Everyone was busy at the beauty shop, the chairs were full and there were women sitting, reading old magazines, gossiping and waiting to get their hair done. Some, who were waiting decided to have a manicure and their manicurist, Sherri, was happily busy and chatted about the latest celebrity gossip and the latest on the Royals.Jackie often had to struggle not to roll her eyes when she heard the name, as Sheri liked to make the dot on the 'i', in her name, in the shape of a heart, did not turn it into the French nickname, Cherie*.

The manager, Molly Dale was happy, it had been some time since the shop was this full and had this many waiting customers. She had to call in three part-timers to come in to take care of stations that were usually empty all day long. Hopefully, it would stay this busy, she was worried she might have to cut loose a couple of the full-timers like Jackie Tyler. Surprisingly, some customers were new ones to the shop and they had specifically requested Jackie; they had been impressed with the way she had styled their best mate's hair. For years, Jackie used to take her time, washing, cutting and styling hair, standing around tail-wagging, during her entire shift. If she hadn't had her little girl, Rose to take care of, she would have let her go, a long time ago. Overnight, she became a quiet, almost withdrawn professional, who suddenly showed a flair for perceptiveness of the tastes and desires of her clients and smoothly convinced them to give a new style or cut a try.

Molly noticed something else had changed last week. Whenever Jackie stood by the front window, watching people walking by. She would get misty-eyed whenever a little boy toddled along with his mum or dad, hand in hand. Her eyes and posture would become of someone, who was hurting a great deal, was she thinking of Pete's death, again? Molly wondered if Jackie was earning for a second child, perhaps a son by him that will never be? So sad Pete died before his time and give Rose a little brother. She didn't know Pete personally, but had admired the way he was always so determined

to make a better life for his family with all his wacky get rich business schemes. Too bad he died at the wrong time, if he had lived long enough, his Vitex vitamin drinks would've been one of the earliest beverages, ready to go for the vitamin drink craze that came and stayed. Pete would've made a fortune for his family and got them out of Peckham.

Then Jackie had received a phone call, during her lunch break to immediately come to the school as Rose was in serious trouble and she would be told what happened upon her arrival. It had taken a phone call to find a part-time worker, who was only too happy came in for the extra work, to take her place. The two remaining women who'd directly asked for Jackie were offered a free manicure, by Molly, for their inconvenience. When she explained that there was a family emergency, they agreed to come back the next day and given reserved appointments.

Now Jackie stood before the Headmaster and the teachers, her eyes getting harder and angrier, as she learned what had happened, in the lunch room between her daughter and the two teachers in the cafeteria.

Rose had been in the queuing for her turn for service behind them. The two teachers had cut ahead in the queue to get their food to take back to the teacher's lounge.

"I don't know what that little bint Tyler is up to," Mrs. Whitehill spoke in a stage whisper of French, flashing a snake-eyed glance at her. "But always remember a leopard can't change its spots."

Miss Adams nose crinkled, eyes lit with a cruel glint. "I agree," she answered back in confident French, not caring one wit that anyone else understood what they were saying. "Once a chav, always a chav. What's this about her wanting to be an engineering physics major?"

"Bof, a lorry can't change intelligence and class," said Mrs. Whitehill who gave Rose another dirty look from the side of her snakelike glance. She thought the girl didn't see it, but the girl had.

Rose was listening, despite the calm serene face she showed the world and feigning indifference to their yakety-yak fork-tongued gossip, she was a boiling pot of water ready to spill over the rim any second as she was fluent in three dialects of French. It pained her a great deal to stay calm, pretending she didn't understand what they were saying. Internally, she was rolling seething, furious, but she didn't want to cause a scene. Given how she physically dealt with the bullies on the school grounds the previous week and Headmaster Cummings's veiled warning, she didn't want to push her luck until things were taken care of and she could quietly leave the school system at the end of the year. Her hand started to shake as she reached for her milk carton, placing it on her lunch tray was a problem since her hand was quaking. Rose had to place her tray on the skid to keep it steady; when she picked up her silverware, the shaking became stronger and the students on both sides of her, exchanged worried looks and instinctively preparing to flee the blow-up they were sensing.

"She'll be lucky if she can get a job as a shop girl or a butcher's shop girl like Finch's. More like a future slag, like mother, like daughter." Mrs. Whitehill said with a gleeful voice and a slimy grin. "After all, her mother is known for shagging any man in Peckham, if they so much as shake their cock in her direction and..."

 _"Casse-toi, conne!"_ Rose shouted in French to their shock. She picked up her metal lunch tray and slammed it down so hard on the metal counter. It nearly bent in half and left a sizeable dent in the metal counter, food flew in the air and her silverware clattered to the floor. Her school peers scrambled away like scared mice, then stood a safe distance away to watch would happen next, ready to flee if need be. The cafeteria staff and the adults were too stunned to speak or move, they could only stand there and watch it.

"Fuck off hags, talking trash about my mum! Neither of you know my mum and why she was that way!" Rose snarled and took a step closer to them. Her rage was making her vibrate like a leaf in a violent wind. "You have no right to fuckin' say it!"

They loudly gasped, as Rose proceeded to curse them, in some of the nastiest curses and swear words, a couple which Miss Adams was sure the little miserable terror was making up on the fly. The two teachers stood side by side of each other, shocked at her fluency and explicit use of the French language.

The hot lunch entrées was a choice of a beef burger with chips or Shepherd's pie with creamed potatoes. Along with a salad bowl, bread rolls and fruit cup. Rose was just barely aware enough not to grab the hot foods, but she did reach out, snatched a server's giant spoon and threw globs of cream potato right into their shocked faces and on their dresses. A pan full of fruit cup with a heavy sweet syrup had just been put out. With a shocking display of quickness and strength, she grabbed the pan and tossed it on top of the potatoes already covering them. She didn't remember much after it. She knew she did it, but like watching it on the telly, she felt no connection to the event.

According to several witnesses, Rose in a surprising display of strength, banged the metal pan onto the counter, several times within seconds, denting the pan and the counter and then proceeded to chase the two teachers, around the cafeteria with it. Mostly, the little girl chased Mrs. Whitehill, screaming obscenities in Cockney, French and gibberish until she had her cornered; by then she had dropped the pan and was simply screaming in musical nonsense, waving her hands, stomping her feet wildly. She didn't stop until the school nurse, Nurse Atherton caught and wrapped Rose in her arms and restrained her. Fortunately, Nurse Atherton had once worked with the mentally ill and was properly trained in restraining them and Rafe, the janitor, who had given her warning about the girl and her suspected traumatic stress, and was ready to deal with it. After Miss Evans came and softly, but firmly spoke to her, did Rose settle down and cease her attack. Did Nurse Atherton released her hold; Miss Evans picked up the now sobbing girl and carried her to the school clinic and her mother was called.

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Headmaster Cummings was in a precarious position, after his talk talk with Miss Evans upon seeing the girl's handwritten answers to university level math problems, he agreed to have Rose Tyler's IQ tested and evaluated by the district school psychologist. He had his doubts about her teacher suspecting Rose had traumatic stress, caused by almost getting run down by a lorry. He had originally thought it was simply a serious case of bullying. He had only seen the child, a handful of times last week; he had been very busy dealing with school administration work and school bureaucrats, fighting to keep them cutting the school budget. If he couldn't get a raise in it, he would fight to keep it the same.

Holden Cummings had started out as a young idealist, who thought he could make a difference in the school system and in the lives of socially disadvantaged children. He had gone into Her Majesty's Army at age eighteen and his enraged parents had refused him any financial help when he revealed he didn't plan to be a barrister like his father and his granddad, but a school administrator. He did three tours of duty in the Middle East, which helped finance part of his degrees in education and administration. When he got his university degree, he felt he could change the world, but the reality of life and being sent to the Peckham district, harshly taught him otherwise.

Despite getting worn down by the system and the indifference of school officials, government bureaucrats, teachers and parents. Holden nonetheless gave a damn for the children, who went to his school. Many wouldn't go far in their adult life, some would drop out altogether, some wouldn't bother with their A-Levels. They were just fine with being Peckham residents for life. However, some would try to make something of themselves, those were the students whom he had originally hoped to reach and assist. He wanted to work with older children in secondary school, but he angered the wrong people in fighting the system and knew they wouldn't allow him to transfer to another. Provided he stayed in the government school system and he wanted to serve on behalf of those children and young teens.

He felt as if he had let Rose Tyler down, by not recognizing the signs of traumatic stress, in the child, sooner. He had seen it first hand with his military mates and veterans, he should've remembered that it could happen to anyone, at any age, in various scenarios, besides military duty or a violent crime. When the bumps, bruises, black-eyes, leg limping, falls and bloody noses started, she was many times near the incident. Twice, he had discreetly watched her interaction with the other students on the playground, from a window and witnessed as her schoolmates tried to bully her around, for her sudden too-posh behaviour change and their followers standing to the side watching, hoping for an entertaining show. They always came after her first, if they kept it to just taunts and name calling, she would ignore them, but if they didn't like being ignored and made it physical, she did something about it. She would efficiently practise self-defence with a handful or less of moves, always taking out the leader first, if it was a group. She didn't hesitate to hit, kick or punch them and tiny as she was, her agility and quick thinking always won the fight. She moved as if she had years of training in kick-boxing and Taekwondo.

He knew life outside of the school was tough and Rose had to be able to handle bullies on her own. Life wasn't kind to the weak or the dreamers in the council estates. Like many of the adults there, he chose to ignore it, unless a true serious injury like a broken bone or knife wound required hospitalization, happened on the school grounds. Sadly, sometimes ugly things had to be settled privately between adults or children. Though he did secretly admire the two toilet hair washings Rose gave a couple of the girls in the girl's lavatory, it reminded him, of how one Lance Corporal Cocksucker, almost got their unit killed trying to do things his own way during a practice battle drill on a beach. Held upside down by two men with the rest of the unit as witnesses, three flushes for him to get the message to behave, act like a team member and transfer out of the unit as fast as possible. The bastard panicked, went AWOL that night, making things far worse for himself; he gave the Redcaps a hard time, fought them and was later dishonourably discharged.

His brief looks had seen how high strung like a too tight bowstring, hypervigilant Rose was as she waited for an attack to happen. When he passed her in the hallway, her glassy eyes were always on the watch for whatever or whoever would appear out of nowhere. He should've taken Miss Evans seriously; this time, Rose Tyler destroyed school property, publicly cursed the Hagfishes, yes, he knew what the staff and children called the pair behind their backs, threw food on them and chased them around the cafeteria with a food pan, trying to do real bodily harm. Unless he could find a way to get the Hags, to back off and sweep the incident under the rug, he would have to report it, to school authorities and social services. The Headmaster didn't want it to be on her public record for life and ruin her possible future academic career, especially if she were truly a genius and later were to obtain her Ph.D. in engineering physics, it could be over before it started.

Headmaster Cummings could clearly see, on the one side of his desk that the Hags had cleaned themselves up and somehow managed to find albeit ill-fitting dresses, that didn't fit them very well. They looked like a couple of poorly-made rag dolls with washed, stringy straight hair, even with their hair pulled back with hair clips and clothes that were a bit too tight here and a touch too loose there in the wrong places. He had to stifle, the urge to giggle at them. On the other side was one irate mother and a teacher willing to fight for the girl. The girl appeared to be slightly dazed, uncaring of her surroundings, her eyes moving in a way that reminded him of the way he'd seen the eyes of men, who were lost in memories of the Gulf War. _A lost soul, in a land of shadows, who needs help to find her way back to the living and see the light, again_. Holden's gut feeling was Rose Tyler was worth fighting for, if the first way didn't work he would pull out his 'Big Gun' and blast away the Hagfishes.

He had only put up with the Hags because there were few teachers willing to teach in Peckham and despite being strict with their students, especially mean to female students, they were fair graders and he achieved success with the implied threat of transferring seriously misbehaving students to their classrooms was enough to get almost all of them to behave. This took a toll on the teaching staff morale; the Hags were smart enough to behave themselves around those in authority over them in the school system. However, no direct proof was to be had on them since they used third-hand gossip and inferences to manipulate their colleagues and superiors. Now he saw that he had let the Hags get away with their atrocious behaviour for far too long.

First, he had to get rid of a certain tittle-tattle eavesdropper, who blabbed the Rose Tyler Story to anyone who would listen this morning. How else could the Hagfishes and at least, half the school know by lunch time? When Miss Evans asked to speak to him, at the end of the school day, he hadn't seen Mrs. Audley in the front office and had guiltily assumed the gossip-monger was gone for the day. He had left his office door open to keep any accusation of improper behaviour with a subordinate at bay, in case anyone drifted in since they were one man and one woman alone in his office.

"Mrs. Audley!" he called out over the inter-office speaker.

A tall, thin, pale skinned woman, built like a whippet hound immediately opened the door. "Yes, Headmaster Cummings?" He knew she loved to eavesdrop, especially when she thought there was any chance of over hearing a juicy scandal.

"I noticed how hard you've been working, lately." Ha! Evelyn Audley sat on her arse all day, gossiping with the staff or teachers who came by for whatever reason or loaf around and only did a last-minute rush job on her enormous pile of school paperwork. The only reason she got it done at the end of the day was because she could flawlessly type a hundred plus words a minute, fill out and organize paperwork, within an hour. When it came to gossip, the only thing faster than her fingers was her mouth. "Why don't you break take an early break, in the staff lounge, make it a full hour. Bye."

Mrs. Audley was gobsmacked, she hadn't had a chance to say a thing and had already been dismissed to the staff lounge and just when things were going to get good and loud, in the Headmaster's office.

The sanctimonious, Hagfishes softly snickered at the busybody being put in her place, though she was a great source of gossip. They viewed her as expendable nobody, not their friend nor their ally despite what the gullible woman thought, but they viewed her dismissal as an advantage. Later, they would gleefully narrate to her their version of events. They were, of course, the innocent victims, whereas that slag, Rose Tyler would be a registered ABSO for life instead of a distinguished physicist. They'd make sure that the little chav would know her place.

"I demand the Authorities be called, I want to press charges for assault!" Mrs. Whitehill demanded.

"As do I!" Miss Adams seconded.

"Now, ladies," the Headmaster said, placating the angry Hagfishes whilst noting the angry Jackie Tyler ready to pounce and kill her prey like a mother panther. Internally, he shuddered at her intense gaze trained on the two spiteful teachers, grateful he was not, on the receiving end of it.

"I'm sure we can fix this little misunderstanding between you and Miss Tyler."

"Fix!" Mrs. Whitehill hissed. "There's no misunderstanding. The little cha... miscreant attacked us for no reason. We did nothing to provoke that attack."

Observing Rose's lack of reaction to what was going on around her, Miss Adams decided to freely take advantage of it and knowing the Headmaster only knew a smidgen of the French language, to liberally add her own lies. "Yes, We were merely talking about the recent Manchester United versus the Arsenals match."

"Liars!" Rose hissed in French, suddenly alert to the current situation. "You were saying disgusting things about my mum! Mrs. Whitehill, you said, I quote, 'After all, her mother is known for shagging any man in Peckham, if they so much as shake their cock in her direction and...' '

"What!" Jackie snarled, remarking that one of the teachers had a wedding band on, stepped right up into her face and knew she was Mrs. Whitehill. "You said that in front of my little girl?! How dare you numpties say that in front of my daughter or any child, who happened to be there." Jackie had said, all of this in accented, though correct French like Rose had done. On Pete's World, Jackie had learned to speak the official languages of the New Union of Europe - French, Gaelic, Italian, German, Spanish – in addition to Eurasia's Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese, though nowhere on Rose's level of fluently speaking one hundred and twenty-one human languages, counting dialects.

The two teachers were instantly in Jackie's face, but like a tigress defending her cub, she didn't back down a single inch. Rose watched and listened in amazement as Jackie practised her proficiency in obscenity in four different languages with the Hags.

The women were speaking so fast that the Headmaster and Miss Evans recognized an only an odd word, here and there. Cummings saw it was rapidly going out of control and fully exerted his Headmaster persona.

"Enough!" he commanded loudly, but not quite yelling. The two teachers instantly stopped and glared at him for interfering with their argument. He didn't back down. He gave as good as he got, right back at them.

"Ladies, sit." He pointed to the three chairs in front of his desk to Jackie and Mrs. Whitehill to the separate sides and Rose to the middle third chair, guided there by her mum and left Miss Evans and Miss Adams standing at the sides of his desk. Miss Evans stood behind Rose's chair and Miss Adams stood behind Mrs. Whitehill, each clearly showing which side they supported.

"Everyone will speak English for the rest of this meeting," Cummings stated firmly, his voice and posture made it clear he was the Headmaster and wouldn't tolerate dissent in his presence. Everyone instantly sat down to their assigned seats.

For the first time in years, Headmaster Cummings was the Headmaster personified in body, spirit and mind. "Miss Tyler, has no legal excuse for her attack on Mrs. White and Miss Adams," he began. Mrs. Whitehill tried to speak, but his glare instantly stopped her, before she could say the first syllable and she snapped her mouth shut, in stunned surprise. "However, you and Miss Adams did your best to provoke her. Everyone on the school staff and I included know how you two enjoy publicly lording your multilingual skills by crudely talking and cavorting in languages few people here understand, especially the children and those who do don't dare cross either of you until today."

Headmaster Cummings quickly walked over to the office door, opened it, looked around the front office and spotted someone in it. He murmured something to them, that no one in the room could hear. He turned and stepped to the side with a Cheshire Cat grin as a petite, Rubens beauty with rich chocolate skin with a kiss of cream tone spot on the right side of her face, walked into the room. She was wearing a lunch lady white uniform and hairnet.

"Ladies. This is Mrs... Excuse me..." he politely apologized to the woman. "This is Professor Veronique. She has a surname and is from a small country right beside Rwanda whose name I can't pronounce." The woman gave him a good-natured smile.

"Professor Veronique was a tenured mathematician and physicist of the University that was in their country's capital and has two PhDs in Mathematics and Physics. When radicals overthrew their government and civil war erupted, her family had to flee because of their Western World educations and the rebels were out to purge anything of the West to purify their culture. Professor Veronique is fluent in sixteen languages." the Headmaster stated as fact as his audience quietened. "Would you like to take an educated guess which one is one of her native tongues?" he continued with a sinister smile on his face, glancing at the two hard hearted teachers.

Veronique gave Rose and Jackie, a reassuring twinkly gleam in her eyes look at them. She admired, how the Headmaster handled the slimly eels in the room. She had seen first-hand in the school cafeteria, how vicious the pair was to the students, cold to their peers and usually behaved like sycophants to their superiors. How rude and crude they were arrogantly flaunting their gift by assuming no one else in the school understood them.

When she had first started during the fall of this school year, Veronique had talked to another of the kitchen staff, who spoke French natively and had worked there for years. She was advised by her that it was best to avoid trouble with the Hagfishes; they were well known for breaking and eating their victims alive and it was best to pretend she didn't know what they were saying.

Last week, Veronique had seen a significant overnight change in Rose Tyler. She had a excellent memory for names and faces for students, even during in her university teaching and mentoring days. She went from a charming, warm young girl, who had friends and she could stand on her own with her peers to a withdrawn and a high-strung poodle on the edge of a nervous breakdown child. Becoming the centre of major bullying within the Peckham school, her two friends, Keisha and Shareen started to sit farther and farther away until they sat a couple of tables away from Rose during Friday lunchtime. The girl was clearly not upset; on the contrary, she seemed relieved not to be bothered by them. The way she moved, the nervous little twitches of her head, her hands and body clearly showed to the mathematician. Rose Tyler barely ate enough food to feed a mouse. Despite the rumour that the girl and her mother had almost had been run down by a lorry, experience told her something worse than a vehicle incident had happened to her and they were covering for it. The pauvre had PTSD and Veronique knew it intimately.

When civil war broke out, in her homeland, her husband, three teenage children and she could barely pack little more than the clothes on their backs, when they received an anonymous late night phone call to flee the anti-Western rebels searching for them. Her and her husband's education at Oxford, where they had met, their children going to a Belgian- operated lycée and their family's loud active fighting for human and children rights within their homeland had put them on the top of the new regime's hit list.

Fleeing their city out into the countryside, they joined the flood of refugees in walking across jungle and mountains to reach a neighbouring country. It was like the family was being protected by divine intervention, just the right person appeared to help them get to safety, when food, water, warmth and medicine was needed, it was provided as if out of thin air. Though they saw and survived many hardships before reaching the refugee camp, their family remained intact until they arrived at the border of a UN safe zone. Human traffickers taking advantage of the civil war, attacked her group of refugees. Her husband successfully led their band of refugees into fighting them off, but as the last truck fled, one of the human traffickers shot one last bullet out of spite at their son. Her husband leapt, shoved their son down to the ground and took the killing shot meant for him. Her children were traumatized and it nearly destroyed the family who survived. For the sake of the children, Veronique held herself together to lead them and the survivors of the group to the camp. Three days, after their arrival, at the centre, a high-level British official on site miraculously recognized Professor Veronique for her human rights work and her published theoretical work in space travel, and ordered that the paperwork to grant her and her children political asylum to the UK be expedited.

Once they made it to safety in London, their PTSD and night terrors came out full blown;They refused counselling to help them to deal with their traumas and their new life in the UK, believing it was a private family matter and shameful to accept any more of the government's assistance. Veronique became unable to hold a job past three months with her temper having become unstable. Her son, Alexandre became involved with drugs, stealing, joined a gang and dropped out of school. Her oldest daughter, Dorothea tried to escape it through promiscuity, caught an STD and had a child out of wedlock. The father of Veronique's grandson, Christophe, was never identified, even after a dozen different paternity tests were taken. Angélique, Veronique's youngest daughter, way to deal with it was to take on the role of the perfect trouble free teen. She didn't get the attention she truly needed, something she knew she would feel guilty about for the rest of her life. The pivot point, their wake-up call came for the entire family came when Angélique, displaying a too happy smile went into the bedroom she shared with her sister and the baby to do her homework. While the rest sat in the sitting room to watch a forgettable sitcom, during commercial, Dorothea went to their bedroom to get a fresh nappy for Christophe and found her sister's dead, mostly nude starting to cool body and a bottle of prescription strength sleeping pills, in her hand. They wailed in horror at her bare legs and the parts of her body usually clothed in clothes, covered with many cut marks old scars, healing ones and fresh slices.

Veronique and her surviving family finally at last admitted they needed professional help. Over the course of the next four years, they slowly healed and once more became a functioning and united family unit. Alexandre, went through drug rehab, three times before being able to stick with his sobriety, though not before enduring a brutal ritualistic gang beating they gave to ex-members, and ended up in the hospital for several days. It took months for him to physically recover. He went back to school, applied himself and finished with four A-Levels with the highest grades possible, earned an scholarship to University and to this day continued his post-traumatic stress therapy and doing volunteer peer-to-peer counselling with other troubled refugee youths. Although Dorothea struggled to live down her sexually loose reputation, she had stayed in school and finished her A-Levels. She found a job working for Finches Butcher Shop; even though the pay was barely over minimum wage and hard work, surprisingly Finch was impressed by her quick mind and strong work ethic and she quickly became his assistant manager, by her first year. Whenever possible she squeezed in business classes for at-risk youths and raised her son as a single parent.

For Veronique it was taking time to undo the reputation she had earned because of her temper. She had to apply to several temporary agencies and many other places, just to get any sort of work, from cleaning toilets in offices and dog kennels to finally, in despair over money, working as a sex phone worker. Months later, out of the blue, a long term and permanent placement agency, the Lupus Hiring Agency, to which she couldn't remember applying called and a man with a giggly voice offered her the job of working for a school in Peckham as a lunch lady. She snapped up the opportunity and started the following day, the first day of school. She did feel badly for the woman she'd replaced, who had slipped on a fruit rind on the sidewalk steps and broke her leg earlier in the week and was unable to return. This time, after several months of therapy, she was in control of her temper at her current job.

Like the rest of the cafeteria staff, Veronique, the teachers, the children and other adults there simply stood there and watched Rose's torture by the other children and the Hagfishes. It took everything she had, not to reprimand the two for saying cruel things about the child. It was clear Rose Tyler understood was being said and was trying to ignore it, but when Mrs. Whitehill started to say the disgusting crude things about her mother rage poured into the child's eyes and realizing the she wasn't going to take her mother being insulted, Veronique almost crossed herself, though she was a lapsed Catholic, and whispered a prayer, for the child under her breath during the entire fiasco in the entire cafeteria.

Seeing Rose's shattered face and broken spirit, Veronique swore she would step up and tell the Headmaster, what she heard and witnessed. It would, however, mean leaving her job at the school, before the Hags could eat her alive. It was simply the right thing to do. She would miss the healthy pay check from the hiring agency, but the child's well-being came first. Now she stood before the Headmaster, the teachers, the ferociously protective mother and Rose to bear witness to what happened. She could see the two Hags looking at her over-calculating and evaluating their best course of backbiting.

How far the woman had fallen, Mrs. Whitehill thought, if she was a former university professor with two PhDs. A quick glance to Alicia and in their unique understanding of each other's minds, found her lacking and would take her down later like a pair of hyenas on a dying gazelle. Her only friend, in her entire life slightly nodded back.

"Professor Veronique would you repeat what you told me earlier?" the Headmaster asked. He went to stand in front of his desk, positioning himself to be able to see everyone.

"Mrs. Whitehill said and I quote, _'After all, her mother is known for shagging any man in Peckham, if they so much as shake their cock in her direction...'_ and that was when the child lost it..."

The Headmaster gave Jackie such a stern look when she audibly growled, on hearing it. Again, she was instantly silent and gave him a nod of respect. Using the discipline that she had learned as the wife of the top business mogul, of Pete's World, socialite and representative of the charity branch of the League of Nations, she remained silent.

"Lost it my arse!" the older of the two teachers nearly shouted. "I want her immediately charged for assault!"

"I agree," Miss Adams said firmly and taking a step closer to the back of the chair to show her support. "I want to press charges, too."

"How do you know this woman, is who she says she is?" Miss Adams said. "She could be a refugee of Rwanda. For all we know, she's a former Interahamwe and she could've easily faked her touching story to get her family and her own arse out of there. Anyone can slap a title in front of their name and sound important. Those people are apparently diplomats and toilet workers."

The Headmaster struggled not to roll his eyes at this blatant attempt to play the foreign and race cards. Cummings held his professional face before taking a deep breath. "I checked out and confirmed her credentials. The professor has three major articles published in two prestigious journals of physics and mathematics. She was the youngest accepted contributor in their history and in the other she became a well-known name within those fields when she made it into their journal two years, in a row."

The pair didn't know what to say to that, so they remained silent for a moment. "It's still no excuse, for her to attack me and Miss Adams like she did," the elder teacher said stiffly. "And she humiliated us in front of the entire school, too."

"Quite right," Adams piped in.

Jackie looked at Rose who had wasn't focused and she had drifted back into somewhere else in her mind. All she could feel was guilt that she hadn't seen this coming, for she had been so wrapped up in herself and letting Rose get away with her too frequent I'm fines and occasional nothing's-wrongs When she was asked how she was enduring school. Even with the Ood's help, Rose woke up tired moving and smiling like a puppet first thing in the morning until she came out of the lavatory with a smile on her face and moved with a great deal of control. She should've seen it. She needed to end this instantly.

"We'll reimburse you for your ruined clothes and pay for another outfit to replace it." Jackie immediately said to everyone's surprise. "Five hundred quid."

Miss Adams eyes narrowed, at the mother. "You don't have..."

"You would be surprised," the wolfish woman snapped. "You'll have your money tonight and something for your... humiliation. Twelve thousand quid certified cheques on top of it." She hated to reward the women for their cruel behaviour, but they needed to get this buried and out of the way to protect Rose from social services, the law, her future academic life and get her the help she needed for her trauma.

"I don't believe you," Whitehill hissed. "I want to press..."

"Enough!" Headmaster Cummings said. "Mrs. Tyler wouldn't risk making such a generous offer and hurt her daughter further if she couldn't deliver what she promised to you. I advise you to take her up on it, accept the money, gather your things, hand in your resignations within the hour and don't let the door hit in you in the arse as you leave this building for good."

"You can't do this!" Adams hissed. "You're violating proper procedures, we'll fight this every step of the way and..."

"Enough!" he repeated loudly, this time with such a strong force that it silenced the entire room. He walked to the back of his desk, opened a drawer, took out a large padded mailing envelope, taking out several glossy pages and tossed them on top of his desk. He snapped his fingers, signalling them to step up and observe its contents. Everyone sharply gasped. The teachers paled as if they were ill and about to faint.

 _"The Bokke!"_ Rose's defender's hissed.

"You're Springbok fans!" Veronique growled.

"Just wait until the entire school hears about this one!" Miss Evans crowed and gave them a wicked smile.

There were many pictures of the two women and a man, who appeared to be Mr. Whitehill, at a Springbok victory party, dressed in yellow and green jerseys and very happy looks on their faces. It showed they weren't used to smiling and were grinning like piranhas, celebrating the triumph winning of the most hated Ruby team in the world of its time. Above the group of the supporters was a large sign in Afrikaans that proclaimed _God, Volk Vanderland_. Jackie could see Jack in the background in a couple of them, he was winking and giving the thumbs up sign, with the Hags front and centre with mugs of ale in their hands and of other various Springbok fans. Oh, my! There was a up and coming local politician, who would one day be on Lord Mayor of London, and a woman, whose name she couldn't recall who would later become a well known theatre actress and a future police commissioner. She looked at the mailer and saw it had the current date written on it but no postal markings. It must've gotten past the office gossip, Mrs. Audley and placed directly by hand into the Headmaster's mail tray.

She picked up the first picture within reach and flipped to its back to look for a store marking, instead saw and read an club address and a date of when the photos were taken in 1983. The Hags were clearly filth, they were supporters of Afrikaner Nationalism.

Fear poured into the black hearts of the Hagfishes; if word got out on this they would be socially and professionally condemned, especially by those who would love to get even with them. They would go from being the feared to living in fear of the ones whom they had belittled, manipulated, insulted or ostracised over the years. They knew they were defeated. "Fine," Whitehill said coldly. "We've better have our cashier cheques tonight as promised." She stood up and Miss Adams following her lead, stalked out of the room, banging the door on the way out.

The Headmaster let them leave without a proper dismissal or reprimand for abusing the door. He just wanted them out of his school. Cummings relaxed his posture and turned his concerned gaze to Rose, who was still in her own little world and displayed little emotion. He sat down and signalled to Miss Evans to sit in the other chair, along with Jackie in the other one. Veronique declined to sit down on a nearby offered couch and simply stood behind Rose's chair.

"One problem out of the way," the Headmaster said. "Regrettably, there's school property damages to be taken care of next. Rose did quite a job. How she got the strength to do what she did, I don't want to know, but I can't overlook it Mrs. Tyler. I must ask for reimbursement for it. Will it be a problem for you after you take care of the Hags?"

Jackie relaxed some, but kept her guard up. "No problem, it will be taken care of."

"It's none of my business how you do it, but I'm relieved you can," Cummings softly sighed. "Regrettably, I shall have to expel Rose. I have no choice."

"Understandable." Jackie acknowledged with a small nod.

The four adults quickly agreed to keep what had transpired between themselves. The Headmaster gave Jackie the Springbok photographs to do whatever she wanted with them. When there was a gentle knock on the door, the Headmaster was surprised to see a tall, young woman, with very light, almost pale, white skin, and sparkling gem-like green eyes with brilliant mermaid hair of reds, oranges and yellows tied in a loose-side braid hanging over the front of her shoulder and almost to her thigh. Dressed like a woman of a high-class office professional - feminine black jacket, black skirt, white, crisp blouse and a hat with a full veil pulled back to show her face - she was Ariel of the Little Mermaid come to life.

"Greetings, Headmaster Cummings," Jackie heard the woman speak with a hint of an accent in her voice she couldn't identify. Except for her daughter, the women in the office turned to look at her. "I'm Doctor Mera Vallantyne. Rose's cousin, Captain Harkness notified me that my services were urgently needed."


	5. Dr Vallantyne and Healing Begins

"You start with a darkness to move through  
but sometimes the darkness moves through you." 

Dean Young

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Trigger Warning!

From time to time I will be posting Mature rated chapters.

I will post the warnings at the top of those chapters.

A little of Rose's psychological abuse by the Valeyard is revealed in this chapter.

Humiliation, psyche outs and degrading actions do count as torture, even if there's no direct physical abuse of the victim going on at the time.

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Many grateful thanks to my fantastic beta, Kepler's Dream for her invaluable beta editing skills and her suggestions on IKRM that help it grow and go to places I never would've thought of.

Thanks Ari.

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The Headmaster was relieved help was here for Rose; he chose not to question how her cousin, Captain Harkness, knew to call the doctor. Veronique went back to the cafeteria kitchen to finish her work, Miss Evans went back to her classroom and Jackie protectively guided the dazed Rose, out of the office and followed the woman out to her nearby parked car.

Dr Mera drove like a crazed speed demon; Jackie had survived her share of them as a passenger as well as guilty of being one from time to time when she had a car, but this woman's driving made her look like an inexperienced piker. She noted how the traffic lights and signals always worked to her advantage and she only stopped a couple of times on the way to her office for people crossing the cross walks. One time did she stop, stepping right out into the road and helping a clearly frightened elderly lady with a grocery handcart in the middle of the cross walk trying to reach the other side. She gave the horn honking drivers stern looks that caused them to pause as she walked the grateful woman to safety, said a few brief words to her, kissed her on the cheek and skipped back to her car. Otherwise, it was a quiet ride to Dr. Vallantyne's medical office in the Canary Wharf business district.

Jack was waiting for them at the car park lift. He was nearly in tears when he saw the nearly catatonic Rose. He took her tiny hands into his, kissed her on the forehead and softly said, "Rosie, please come back to us, little sister." She didn't blink, trapped within her dark and painful world.

Jackie watched as he gently lifted and carried an unprotesting Rose into the lift. A moment later, they were clearly in a very advanced medical clinic with high technology equipment. She couldn't help but notice how carefully he placed her on the examination table. She watched as Miss Vallantyne immediately checked her vital signs, inquired about Rose's current medical history and allergies, inserted an IV into the woman-child for her shock and mild dehydration and placed EKG and other wireless monitoring pads on her body. Using one hand held device that look like an otoscope, she placed quickly it into Rose's ear for a few seconds, studied the results on the small screen and made notes on her clipboard. She gathered a saliva sample, with Jackie's permission, snipped a few strands of hair and a few pieces of Rose's fingernails and placed everything into a medical machine to analogize it. The doctor decided to wait to ask her patient's permission for drawing blood, when Jackie explained Rose had a fear of medical blood drawing ever since her first imprisonment, by the Valeyard.

On the other side of the room. The psychiatrist did an examination of Jackie, also giving her the same tests she did with Rose. She weighed Jackie, who noted to her horror that she needed to lose a stone and a half, took her blood pressure, asked her about her health and her own state of mind. She drew Jackie's blood, put it in a machine that quickly analysed the results on six sheets of paper.

Dr. Mera quickly read them, "A bit low on folic acids, nothing having a good fresh salad on a regular basis can't fix. You're low calcium and Vitamin D, some over the counter supplements will do it. You have high blood pressure, due to your past traumas, time travel adjustments and body switch. I'll write out prescriptions for your beginning UTI and yeast infection." Jackie couldn't help, but blushing on hearing it.

"I can wait until she's awake to do her blood testing," the woman said. "to conclude all of her physical tests." Then she placed clipboards of the printed results onto a small tall table by the door.

Jack stayed with Rose, whilst the red, orange and yellow mermaid haired woman led Jackie to her private inner office and led her to a comfortable cushioned leather chair with a small table and another identical chair beside it, before walking over to her bar and started to make herself a drink.

"Whiskey with ice?" The tall woman asked. Jackie looked up startled at Mera's rather welcome offer of a stiff drink. "No, I didn't read your mind. I'm very good at guessing what people enjoy drinking when it comes to alcohol. Besides, I saw you give a longing glance at my whiskey decanter." She winked at her, then she used the prongs to place ice into the dolphin-engraved glass. Jackie cracked the tiniest of smiles.

"You're an alien," she stated.

"Yes, I am. I'm an Uol'H," The multicoloured hair alien woman nodded as she handed the glass to Jackie, the ice clicking softly against it. "My people are empaths. Will it be a problem for you and your daughter, Rose?"

"Jack trusts you, so I trust you," Jackie said without hesitation. "But I can't speak for Rose."

"Thank you." The tall woman said, as she walked over and sat down in the opposite chair. For a few minutes they simply sipped their drinks in the silent room. Jackie knew fine whiskey when she tasted it. It went down like smooth liquid fire, well aged and after awhile a soft warm glow started to spread within her body and she started to relax, a little.

"This is my fault," she suddenly sobbed. "I should've seen it coming." Her drink splashed a bit onto her lap from her shaking hand. She had barely said the words when she found a soft cloth handkerchief in her hand instead of the whiskey, with which she dried her eyes and blew her nose in it. Then she reached once more for the whiskey glass, now atop a coaster on the table, and watching the tiny ice cubes float and click in the amber liquid, finished it off with one gulp.

"I should've known something was wrong, when she kept insisting everything was 'fine' at school and it wasn't. I'd forgotten she can be an excellent actress when she wants to be."

"Nonsense." Dr. Mera said without judgement. "You're dealing with your own problems and you can't see, recognize everything going on around you. You're an emotional sentient being like me and we screw up from time to time. You've had a lot to deal with when it comes to time travel, the Doctor and his dark side."

Jackie's head snapped up, alert at the woman's words.

"Jack declined to share personal details, but I know just enough to observe that you and Rose have been dealing with several years of off and on severe trauma, imprisonment, torture and time dilation. The multiverse is involved, too. I know about the Doctor and his TARDIS; he was a myth among my people of my original timeline. There were rumours of the Valeyard and the Beast, in the Prime Universe and his final fate."

'I personally experienced several years of imprisonment, torture, traumatic stress, which unfortunately includes mind rape. So I do understand a great deal what you and your daughter will be dealing with, in the years to come." Dr. Vallantyne softly said while holding up her whiskey glass up in near the front of her face.

Her eyes showed her thinking deeply for a moment, staring at the ice cubes memorized for a brief moment by it. "It's similar to alcoholism and drug addiction in that it will haunt you for the rest of life and when it does flare up, hopefully you have learned, the coping skills you need to deal with it, within you."

"Refresh?" Dr. Mera asked, getting up to take care of her own drink.

"Yes, thank you," Jackie said softly, handing her the whiskey glass.

She could see the woman was deep in thought, her own mind far away as she poured fresh whiskey. "More ice?"

"One cube, please."

Freshened drinks in hand, the women sat in their chairs, sipping in silence, once again.

The Uol'H said, not looking at her, placing her drink on the table coaster, clasping her fingers in a finger tent and gently looking at Jackie. "You survive it one day at a time. Some days are much better than others and others far worse. You can be in the middle of the best day of your life and then..." She loudly punched her fist into her other open hand, startling Jackie with its intensity and the hard look in her eyes. "Something triggers it." She sighed and stopped, shaking her head, her hair braid swaying with a shimmer of glittering reds, oranges and yellows. "My own story is for another day, Mrs. Tyler."

"Jackie, please," she insisted.

The woman was silent for a moment. "Jackie call me Dr. Mera. It's best we keep it professional. I need to keep a certain level of personal distance to stay objective, especially when it comes to post-traumatic stress. I accept patients the NHS is more than willing to refer to me since I volunteer to do it. I take on the worst cases and I manage three cases, maybe five maximum in a year, in a rotating cycle to avoid burn out." Jackie nodded.

"I do see other types of patients," her eyes smiled. "Some typical toffs, too posh and time with mummy or daddy issues, some real grief counselling, OCD's and others, to be able to afford my lifestyle and this office. I volunteer my professional services, once a month, between two homeless shelters to help the mentally ill street people and the PTSD patients, who see me don't pay a penny for special therapies and medicines I give them are not covered by NHS because I use therapies and medicines that are considered experimental, by today's standards, but approved of in the future.

Along with helping peaceful aliens, to adjust to Earth-life, who can't go home for whatever reasons."

Pete had taught Jackie the value of being a good listener and patience; when it came to listening to others speak, on occasion her temper would get the better of her like it had in the Headmaster's office. This was more than she expected and she wanted to know more about this fascinating alien woman.

"Are you a real psychiatrist?"

"Yes, I am. I earned my degree in the best medical University of my era. The University of New New Oxford. I was taught to deal with several races and my speciality is humans. When Jack brought me to this time and planet, I redid my years of residency to re-earn my credentials here, develop professional personal connections, get used to the people, customs and work within the health and hospital system of the twentieth century UK before I started my private practise. Enough about me, Jackie. Remember, in the days and years to come, there will just as much light as darkness, laughter, tears, hope and fears to face. You need to heal, too. Not just for your own sake, but your daughter's sake. I will be treating you and your daughter, separately and together..."

A child's howl of anguish and despair split the air of ear piercing quality.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

Jack lovingly stroked the back of Rose's hand without the IV and lightly gripped it for several minutes. If only ... if only ... he had known that the Doctor would abandon and imprison her in another universe with his meta-crisis, he would have knocked her out and sneaked her out of that damn TARDIS. Then he felt guilty for the thought, for it would have made him just as guilty of not giving Rose a choice to make her own decision about her life as the Doctor had. If only ... if only ...

The pain of losing Rose and Ianto, so close together left him barely able to emotionally function for years ... if only ... if only ...

No! Stop it, he reprimanded himself. He had to stop; the _'if only's_ would consume him. She needed him.

"Rosie," Jack began in a normal tone. "I won't promise everything will be okay, nor wonderful today, tomorrow, nor the day after it. It's not. You face it, one day at a time. And believe me, I had a lot of time to deal with my own nightmares and night terrors issues, especially those caused by the Master, during the Year That Never Was and the Toclafane. His so-called, 'sessions'... especially when he let the Toclafane 'play' with me ... left me..."

"I know you're in there Rosie," he spoke, deliberately, taking a different direction. Now was the wrong time to share any of his own past traumas with her. "You have the right to feel the way you do. Yeah, every day is a struggle, but then you make it to the end of the day and then you do it over again, the next day. Before you know it, you're not keeping track of the days, but making plans for the future. I will be there for you, Rosie, not going to just leave you behind, nor run off like the Doctor did. If you need to talk to me, in the middle of the night or for any reason, you call me. Any time."

It broke his heart to see Rose staring passively out into the distance, slowly blinking her eyes, her tiny hand was limp in his larger one. He noticed how dark the room appeared despite its sterile white walls, the deafening silence except for the steady beeping of her monitor that showed she was physically alive. The room's window blinds were pulled closed, blocking the natural light. Today was a mostly sunny day for London; it would be a waste if Rosie couldn't enjoy it on some level. He walked over to it and with one swift movement, he pulled the blinds open, revealing the brilliant early evening sight of the sun reflecting off of the towers and buildings of Canary Wharf.

Rose unleashed an ear-shattering wail.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

There was a golden haired woman with wild, teased out hair dressed with ribbons and beads and raggedy clothes draping her body. As Rose watched passively, she was dancing and happily chanting something to herself. They were in a worn out wooden barn, it was worn, wind-beaten and in dire need of repair, bales of straw and sunlight pouring through the aged board gaps. The woman suddenly noticed and wiggled her fingers at her. A bark filled the air, her eyes snapped to an opening between the boards, a wolf, a golden and white furred wolf was looking at her with one golden eye.

Suddenly she was running through the empty fifty-first century space ship, where the Doctor had abandoned her and Mickey so many years ago. The wolf was running close behind, gaining ground. Suddenly, it pounced on her back instead of hitting the rubble covered floor. She found herself back in the place of the two worst moments of her previous life, Bad Wolf Bay and hearing the TARDIS transporting away in the distance.

Nearby, she saw her little five-year old sister, Toni, playing with two other little girls of the same age. Toni had the same strawberry-blond hair as their father with a sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks, her long hair tied in a green bow in the back. The second girl was blond haired in a ponytail, dressed in a green fatigues outfit like a little soldier. The third was brunette with a heart shaped face, short hair and hair clips in her hair, wearing a skirt that came down to her knees in blue plaid and white blouse like a tiny teacher's outfit. They didn't see her as they ran happily squealing, laughing and giggling, chasing each other up and down the beach. She couldn't hear the words they were chanting, with the waves crashing on nearby rocks on the beach and the screeching seagulls above her head. She silently cursed the seagull, who almost successfully took a shat on her from the sky. Then everything was silent, no waves, just still flat water, no birds, but she could hear what the girls were saying, repeating only two words.

"Bad Wolf! Bad Wolf! Bad Wolf!" Then, they ran into the distance and faded away as if they had never been.

A cry and a growl pierced the air. Rose turned sharply to a nearby dune; at the top of it was the golden woman in rags and the golden wolf beside her. She was frowning, waving her hand to approach them. Instead, she screamed and turned to run away, only to fall, again.

This time instead of sand and pebbles, her face hit a cold padded floor, her hands and arms tied to her chest in a straight jacket with Chinese finger traps. Underneath it, she wore a hospital gown and that went down to her knees in a too brightly lit cell. The cell always had a female attendant, observing her through a one way mirror. Aside from ensuring that Rose never moved from her position on the floor, the attendant brought a bedpan once a day for her bodily needs, clean her up as needed, spoon-feed her mostly bland food and gave her water if she behaved. The Valeyard didn't allow male attendants, as he didn't want any other man to see Rose's private bits, except for him. Not even during her torture sessions by other men. She was only allowed to wear knickers under her gown. All day and night long, she wore the straight jacket, unless the Valeyard or one of his torturers would take it off for a physical torture session. She hated the enforced inactivity and the boredom, between the tortures and the experiments - several hours, sometimes days of pure tedium. Her muscles weakened from the lack of exercise, despite the mediation techniques, she had learned over the years. A few times to her horror, she found herself wishing they would come and torture her, just to break the ennui.

She wiggled frantically to get to the wall and used it to help prop herself up before the attendant would come into her cell. If she was lucky, she would simply painfully grab Rose by the nape of her neck and collar, since she couldn't grab her by the hair. It had been cut and shaved off on the first day of her captivity, slowly growing back, then trimmed again to keep it short. If she was unlucky she would be put back into place after a few carefully placed kicks that hurt or a slap. She had learned the latter was a sign that she was going to be punished by sitting there until she pissed and shat her underpants and was left wallow in it until the attendant decided that she would finally be cleaned up.

She preferred the attendants to the Valeyard. If he happened to be watching on video, he enjoyed, simply for the hell of it, unveiling an enormous closed-circuit full colour television flat screen in the wall in front of her. Showing her mum and her dad in separate prison cells, wearing electro-shock collars, giving them shocks for several minutes. She watched them scream and convulse on the floor. Sometimes, the Valeyard did it until they begged for death, then left them whimpering on the floor and without medical help for hours.

"Just look at poor Rose Tyler, helplessly crawling on the floor like a worm on a hot pavement. How the scandal sheets would love to have a picture of this," crowed the Valeyard in his best phony posh voice. Rose realized horrifically the Valeyard had pushed her down to the floor. She had zoned out and hadn't noticed him until now. She carefully chanced a glimpse at him, the angry glare she saw, on the hybrid's face - the face she once loved. His rapid breathes quivered with rage. The Valeyard hated to be ignored, even if it was unintentional. "If only they could see you, now. No longer the beautiful Blushing Rose nor the Renaissance Rose. No longer the great Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. Just a pathetic chav turned space whore who thought she could rise above her station."

She tried to squirm away across the floor in a futile, frenzied escape attempt from the raging half-alien Time Lord. Something happened that day at Bad Wolf Bay Two; the love for the full Time Lord had steadily faded away. The Doctor had assumed she was and always would be the simple, naïve shop girl, whose hand he grabbed, whose eyes he looked straight into and said, "Run!" No matter how long she lived or matured, she would always remain a sweet eternal ingénue, an uneducated chav, who didn't get her A-Levels. After her love faded away, months after they were abandoned by the Time Lord, it was surprisingly easy to keep her emotional distance to Aleister, the identity he assumed before becoming he became the Valeyard. Rose and her family did everything they could to help him adjust to being a mortal Time Lord hybrid with a limited lifespan. They were mostly successful with the little things with bad breath, shaving every morning, daily nutrition, going to the loo three or more times a day, adjusting to a regular work week and budgeting money.

Five months after Bad Wolf Bay, saying Aleister was upset, when Rose wouldn't move in nor share his bed in his new flat, was putting it mildly. For months, he projected a false sense of calm over the subject. Just over a year into her forced permanent return to Pete's World, she had announced at dinner that not only had she resigned from Torchwood with Pete's whole-hearted blessings, but she would be beginning her Engineering Physics Ph.D. dissertation at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Although her mum and Aleister were ecstatic she would no longer be involved in the highly dangerous career of a Torchwood field agent, Jackie burst into tears and Aleister yelled angrily that she would be moving so far from them. The argument went on long into the night. It was the first time Rose had a true taste, a small sample of what it was like to be on the receiving end of the Oncoming Storm's wrath.

Now she had to survive the darkness of the Oncoming Storm amplified in a half-human, half-alien hybrid form called the Valeyard.

"Here let me help you up," the Valeyard lilted in his saccharine sweet voice. He moved as if he was going to actually lift her up and off of the floor.

Rose saw the gun pointed at her, between her eyes; she shivered violently, awaiting the blackness of nothing, and said a few silent, tear-filled, guilty goodbyes to her parents, Tony and Jake before she heard it, click loudly in her ears. It was empty. She was aware she had soiled herself a moment before she blacked out.

Darkness and calm greeted her. She saw a white field of blowing snow with evergreen trees covered in it. She was observing the wintry scene like a disembodied spirit in no form. When suddenly a tree toppled over with a loud crash _._

 _If a tree crashes in the middle of nowhere, does it make a sound?_

The area surrounding her grew darker until there was complete darkness, then she saw a woman's hand give a small wave and golden sparkles appeared and drifted away to a golden door lit by soft light. She looked to the side of the door and saw Mickey from before he had left for the Prime Universe, standing there with their Torchwood friends smiling, popping confetti poppers, tossing party streamers into the air. They wore party hats and some blowing on party tooters and horns, Jake was holding a large cake with mounds of fluffy, pastel-coloured icing with icing pink and yellow roses on it. "Surprise!" they shouted. She opened the door and saw only sky and clouds below and around her glowing with the orange of a setting sunset. She turned to look back at the party. They were all now standing closely together like in a portrait. Nearly everyone, including Mickey was waving; some held beverages in their hands, he and a couple of other mates held up their pints and everyone was happily waving, except Jake, who still held the cake up, saying their good-byes.

As she stepped through the door, Rose turned around to see the bright orange light of the sunset glowing brighter and brighter. When the golden-haired raggedy-dressed woman was suddenly standing before her, a sexy wild woman, a woman who ran with the Wolf, Rose reflected that calm and confidence, especially in her own sexuality. Light softly glowed from the ground lighting up the darkness, she cupped and held her hands close together in front of her body and a shimmering globe of golden and white sparkles appeared and then she let it drift away. She saw she was standing in the middle of a complicated design of a lattice circle with partial circles and diamond shaped spaces within it, glowing with a white soft light. The orb splintered into several others of the same size and pulsing with their own soft luminescence that lit up the darkness around her. She lifted her right hand and the orbs in the distance disappeared. In their place appeared balls of made of golden strands drifting towards and around her. She could hear an emollient and glorious sound, the song of the universe and there was nothing to fear. Another enormous ball of strands appeared brighter, bigger and more beautiful than all the others she had seen. Rose was growing dizzy, the dazzling beautiful light was almost too much for her mind and emotions to handle, but she couldn't look away.

Then she found herself standing to the side of the centre of the lattice circle and the middle of it glowed brighter and energy drifted up from the middle of it, forming a strand ball and grew more and more complex in design before her eyes, forming a strand ball and growing even more complex before disappearing. The light made several more that drifted away. In the distance, they took on the shapes of stars and galaxies, nebulas, planets and moons going to take their rightful places in the prime universe. Three dimensional transparent marquise shaped diamonds started to float by, some drifted up into the air and others went down around her like idly falling raindrops. When several large ones drifted above her head, threads of light connected them to each other into a simpler version of the lattice-like circle above her head and slowly dissolved into petal-shaped golden light flakes. As she gazed upon the beauty of the stars and galaxies she helped create, she felt a presence within her that was pleased with the harmony of the spheres. The song of the universe changed into a more dramatic tempo. Thin strings of multi-coloured lights appeared, side by side and were drawn together merging into a single line in the distance somehow Rose knew the now multi-coloured line led to the entity behind this all. She was in awe that the hidden presence had allowed her to help it formed new life, new stars and life-giving worlds, where one day sentient beings would thrive. Their civilizations will raise and fall again in an endless loop. Some would stay on their worlds forever, some would move to the stars, grow, evolve and collapse, some will merge either willingly, some would not reach their true potential. But still, life glorious life in many forms and sentient beings, common, rare and unimaginable would continue until the end of time and the universe, and she was allowed to be a small part of it.

Suddenly she was standing on her feet with a hard bounce. Rose found herself, standing directly in front a human-sized Beast bound in his chains, that were embedded in the rock ground imprisoned in the same pit on Krop Tor, wearing an orange space mining suit of orange, black straps and no helmet. She found herself standing between two slender pillars, each holding a large glowing urn with handles on top of them. The Beast glared and roared its anger in her direction. It tried to reach and grab her, but the chains held him in place. She couldn't help noting his one curved horn was broken and cracked and the other had a manacle and chain attached to it.

 _"And the lost girl, so far away from home,"_ the Beast laughed mirthlessly with the voice of her second Doctor. _"The Valiant Child who will die in battle. Do you think you have the strength to face me? A second time?"_

_"Burn with me, Rose Tyler!"_

 _"If I can't have you then no one else will!"_

Rose merely stood there, looking intensely, but defiantly at the Beast. He thrashed in his chains, roaring in anger when he failed to get a reaction.

 _"You think you can hold me?"_ He snapped his chains with ease and Rose didn't have time to react, before he had his clawed hands tightly around her throat, struggling to breathe.

 _"Burn with me!"_

The Beast loosened his grip just enough to allow her enough air to scream; before he filled her with the heat and anger of a sentient sun into her and she started to burn, from the inside out.

Raw cold sunlight nearly blinded her, the glacial winds of the Howling seared her skin and face as it was pulling her into the Void, and she was falling and falling, into an oubliette, eternally toward the wall of damnation as Daleks and Cybermen flew past her. She screamed an infernal, ear-piercing scream as she tumbled down. The sight of Canary Wharf, burning brilliant eventide filled her eyes.

The sting of a smack to her face woke her up and Rose instantly knew she was on the receiving end of a Prentice woman's slap.

"Rose?" her mum said worriedly, but calmly. She saw she was in what appeared to be a small private hospital room. No, it was a private clinic, judging by the advanced medical equipment, the locked medicine cabinet in the corner and a few empty medical beds. She turned to the windows that revealed the beautiful glass and steel of Canary Wharf, if it wasn't for the fact that it led to three of the worst days of her life, years of personal misery, as well as emotional and physical pain, and the meaningless violent death of her adopted homeworld. Suddenly, she saw red, ketchup-like smears of blood on the glass and felt the back of one of hands throbbing in pain. Rose held up her right hand; its back was bleeding.

"Mum?" she whispered, collapsing in a low sob into her mother's warm embrace.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

After she had calmed down, Dr. Mera gave her a quick check-up, taking her weight and height, checking her blood pressure twice and, upon her consent, drawing a vial of her blood. Dr Mera put the vial into an advance medical machine and the little girl watched as the doctor typed "Human, Female, nine years old. Dr. Mera closed the tiny flap and it within seconds, five printed pages of results printed into a holding tray on the side.

She quickly read it, nodding a bit to herself. "Let's go to my office and we'll talk."

Jack was reluctant to follow them until Jackie and Rose encouraged him to come along since they considered him to be family to his surprise and wonder.

They were led into another office, Jackie noted this one was different, from the one she had been in previously. This office was a professional's office: bookcases with assorted books and knick-knacks a traditional doctor's leather chair, with a leather lounge for the patient, soft cushioned chairs in front of her desk and a huge aquarium that made soft, bubbling noises with brilliantly colourful salt-water fish filled with fish castles, mermaids, and shells that bubbled open and shut. She saw Rose was mesmerized by it as her clients went to sit in the chairs in front of the desk and she sat in her chair behind it.

"Rose, I'm going to give you and you, Jackie, some prazosin for tonight to get you started on it. I'll write prescriptions for your mum to take to the chemist in the morning. You both have high blood pressure due to the adrenaline rush that happens when you have your nightmares and night terrors. Be careful; it may cause dizziness and a bit of nausea with fast movements until your body adjusts to it.

"Rose, I know you're a woman, in a child's body, but I want you to have as few drugs in your system as possible, as many are quite addictive and are difficult to withdraw from once used. So, I will give everyone here a list of optional homeopathic remedies in addition to you and your mother's own treatment. Some we should talk over, like diet and supplements" She reached into a drawer, taking out some stapled paper sheets. Jack leapt up for them and handed them out to Jackie and Rose to read.

"No tea after six? Chamomile tea?" Jackie said. "Chamomile tea is for old farts."

"Black tea is a stimulant and known to interfere with sleep," Dr. Mera smiled. "It's only for a while, if you chose to do it. Everything on those sheets, are voluntary options and it's only from 6 pm to 6 am. Otherwise, you can drink as much black tea as you want. There are green and white teas and herbal teas listed; herbal teas can taste very good, especially if you add honey to it and honey is well known to help with sleep, too."

"Physical exercise?" Rose inquired.

"Healthy endorphins are released and when done right, in the right amounts, often you feel much better, more relaxed, and often you sleep better for it. Pick out two activities for the beginning. We'll go over it, tomorrow. You don't want to over do it until your body is in better shape. Aerobics, gymnastics or swimming anything to get your heart and blood pumping and...

Rose's stomach growled loudly, blushing as she realized she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. Dr. Vallantyne gave her a wink.

"For dinner tonight, I recommend fish and chips and your favourite soda," she said as she pulled open a desk drawer, signalling everyone to rise. "And to hold you over, until you can get to your favourite chippie shop. May I recommend you and everyone here have a sweet or two?"

Inside the drawer was a smorgasbord of treats: Flakes, Fruit Salads, assorted sherbet fountains, Maltesers, Opal Fruits, Double Deckers, Crunchies, Chocolate Buttons, Aerobars and other sweet goodies. "What can I say, I have one hell of a sweet tooth." Dr. Mera said with a grin and a small shrug of her shoulders.

Rose got two Maltesers, two Chocolate Buttons for Jackie and two Flakes for Jack.

"Not surprised, you would choose a candy that uses oversexed advertising to sell itself," Rose playfully teased, popping a couple of Maltesers into her mouth and crunched into the chocolate malt balls.

"What can I say," he replied, with a smirk and a wink. "Sex sells and I'm a faithful consumer."

"Ladies, dinner is on me," Jack announced and offered Rose and her mum his arms.

"Before you go," Dr. Mera announced. "I'm scheduling appoints for you, Rose tomorrow, at nine, the day after tomorrow for you, Jackie. Are you able to get off of work for the day?"

"I'll call in a few favours, if I need to and be here," Jackie said.

"I can easily pick you up, Rose," Jack volunteered.

Rose looked, at her mum, though she was an adult in a child's body. They were still figuring out how to work with their changed parent-child relationship. When it came to making decisions about their everyday life. For several years, she had to make too many serious choices and she micromanaged even the little ones. Maybe she should let her mum take some of the burden off of her shoulders and let someone else make some decisions for her.

"If it's all right with you, Mum," she replied. She saw her mum snap her head up in surprise at her question. It was clear on her face she hadn't been expecting it.

"Sure, I have no problem with it." Jackie replied, after a moment. She had looked at Dr. Mera for a clue, on what to do next, but the doctor kept a calm neutral face, revealing nothing of her thoughts.

"Good, now that's settled. I must make my notes and prepare for your session tomorrow, Rose." She gave them the prazosin for the night in separately marked bottles with different dosages according to age and weight differences and wrote out their prescriptions. Jackie promptly put everything into her purse.

Jack drove them back to Powell Estates, in his car since Jackie had used the tube to get to Rose's now former school. They stopped, at Rose's favourite chippie shop for dinner; she was heartily eating her food when she saw some students from the school. They looked at her and started to whisper between themselves about her major blow-up earlier. _Everyone in the council must know about it,_ she dejectedly thought to herself. She was embarrassed about her public display of losing control and whilst doing her best to take it in stride, felt her face hotly blush. The rest of her fish and chips abruptly nauseated her. She made the excuse to go to the chippie's loo and threw up.

When they returned to the Tyler flat, Jackie showed Jack the photographs and the date on the them. She told them about the deal she made with the Hags to pay them off, agreeing to pay for damages to school property and her being expelled by the Headmaster.

Rose felt another deep blush on her face. She had been there and hadn't known what had been going on around her.

Upon closer inspection of the envelope, they found a letter in it. Jack told himself to go back into the past, set up the party and the invites to certain people, including the Hags, to the Springboks victory party and to visit and give Dr. Mera the date, time and address of her first encounter with Rose at the school.

"Ladies," he announced. "I'll be back, by seven o'clock in the morning to spend some time with my favourite Rosie, before we leave for your appointment. First, I have to go to my apartment for my vortex manipulator and my cashier's chequebook."

"You with money," Rose shaking her head. "I remember the Doctor had to give you a credit stick for spending money because you didn't have a penny on you."

"What can I say?" he shrugged with a gleam in his eyes, "Treasure hunting and careful investments pay off."

 _"With a little help from me, my Captain," the TARDIS grumped._

Jack grinned, "And a little help by you. My lady."

Over the weekend, Rose Tyler earned her new nickname 'Iron Knee Tyler'. The TARDIS explained to Jack that Rose and Jackie would need money to get professional help for their traumas, along with some extras to make make their lives comfortable. They damned well-deserved it.

Back in 1892, on Ellis Island the TARDIS told her Captain, where he could find lost treasure in the Caribbean Islands, for a source of money without affecting the timeline. Sixteenth-century, Spanish treasure ships loaded with gold, silver, valuable metals, coins, jewels, religious relics were taken from the Aztec and the Inca Empires. They had been sunken by vicious storms, their entire crews dead, their locations unknown and in the original timeline, were never found. Jack died several times retrieving the deepest pieces, having taken on dangerous sea creatures like sharks and Portuguese men-of-war to protect his crew and himself.

Sadly, on the day they were to sail back to port and cash in their treasure trove, greed overtook his crew. They mutinied against him, thinking he was dead, violence erupted as they instantly turned on each other trying to increase their share of the lost fortune. Jack took down the last man standing, a man named Richard, who originally wanted to acquire wealth to take care of his wife and five children, especially his youngest brain damaged son. He changed as their ship became laden with gold, jewels and treasure. He decided he was going to piss it away, on the traditional wine, women and song. Richard died begging God for forgiveness, as Jack proclaimed he was the Devil, to heighten his fear and promptly strangled him with rope and tossed his dead crew bodies into the ocean. Jack did set aside funds for Richard's and the crew's families, as most had originally planned to give their families a good life, before greed overcame them. Jack informed their families through solicitors that they had died of malaria and gave them generous trust funds.

Over the years Jack would return by himself, gather some more treasure, sell it and on a couple of occasions trade or barter something with it. He formed, the Bad Wolf Company, which would later become Bad Wolf Incorporated and many various other subsidiaries company names and charities. He placed money in assorted banks, buying property and buildings, all over the world. Fixing his own vortex manipulator, he would take some valuables off world to the intergalactic version of Bad Wolf Incorporated and made long-term investments that would pay off over the centuries. Slowly and steadily growing it to keep it unnoticed as possible on Earth and for now, on the intergalactic level. Bad Wolf Incorporation was currently worth over a billion pounds on Earth with Jack as the mysterious hidden owner and CEO, known only by the name of Boe.

Rose surprised them, by how fast she agreed to accept the money. In her first timeline, she would have refused it out of pride. She would accept it for her education, her PTSD therapy, her gymnastics and extra curricular activities.

She agreed with her mum the household expenses would be her domain, emergency expenses, miscellaneous expenses and the soundproofing of their bedrooms were a necessity. Jackie did have her own nightmares, waking with a snap in sharp gasps, struggling to catch her breathe, clutching and rubbing her neck, crying and cursing the Valeyard into her bed pillows. But despite what she had endured in his prison torture chamber, she knew for a fact that her daughter suffered far, far worse than her and Pete.

Jack knocked on the door promptly at seven. Rose gave a little squeal of happiness and leaped into his open arms, hugging him.

"Ladies, mission accomplished," he merrily announced and gave her a big hug back.

They were chatting amiably, eating breakfast and drinking tea. Jack observed Rose was getting nervous about her upcoming appointment with Dr. Mera. She wiggled her fingers and sometimes tapped them on the kitchen table.

There was a knock at the door and Rose immediately got up to answer it.

"Who's there?" She asked through the door since she wasn't tall enough for the peep-hole.

"It's me, Mickey."

She immediately slide the chain lock and opened the door to reveal the twelve year old, Mickey. It was so strange to see him so young looking, after all of these years.

Mickey looked worn out and had his book bag with his school supplies, ready to head to his secondary-school. In the first timeline, he had taken his A-Levels, in Computers, Science and Math, his scores where high, but he didn't do anything with them until he was in Pete's World.

She had forgotten that later this year, in December, his mum would be finally sectioned, by the NHS and before the week was out, managed to find a way to commit suicide there. The thought of having to stand by and let Mickey's mom die, along with his Gran, hit her again.

Mickey saw the concern in Rose's eyes for him. He saw her eyes were full of compassion. It warmed his heart to see it. She never looked at him with pity, it was concern and he loved her for it.

"Mum had a rough night. I kept my eye on her until she fell asleep. Gran needed sleep. Dad was... Dad."

Rose gave him a small nod of understanding.

"Rose! Where are your manners. Invite Mickey in."

"Come in."

"Only for a bit," he said, sniffing and smelling the tea and toast in the air. He was clearly salivating, trying to hide it and Rose pretended she hadn't heard his stomach growl.

Money was always tight for Mickey's family these days with his dad spending any money, by hook or by crook, he could get on fags and ale. He was always wearing new clothes, while his family wore threadbare clothes, coats, worn out shoes and ate two small meals on a good day.

"Want some breakfast, Mickey?" Jackie offered. "We have plenty."

"Thanks, Jackie." He immediately accepted, quickly taking a seat, his book bag beside his chair.

She took the still warm food and quickly filled his plate. He instantly started to shovel and devour it. Jackie harrumphed loudly, sipping her tea, leaning on the kitchen counter. Mickey looked up, sheepishly grinned and slowed down his eating to a reasonable pace.

Mickey said quietly. "I would have called last night, but the phone isn't working." Rose and Jackie knew it meant the phone bill was disconnected because it wasn't paid. Again.

"Yeah, I'm doing better," Rose admitted quietly. "I'm seeing Dr. Vallantyne, later this morning."

Mickey solemnly nodded, letting the topic drop. He shared some Estate gossip and talked in general and was surprised, when Rose asked, how his school was going. Before, she had showed no interest in it. He hadn't seen his mate, the girl he had a crush on since she was six months old and he was five, for almost two weeks, too busy helping Gran to take care of his mum. Even on a good day she was a handful to handle, she needed to be consonantly watched, so she didn't hurt herself. It didn't help his Gran was losing her eyesight, but she insisted Mickey finish his A-Levels and make something of himself. He only went to school and got good grades to please her.

Mickey couldn't help seeing how different Rose was. Her speaking more posh, the way she held her body like an adult. The biggest difference was in her eyes like she had seen and experience something so bad, it had somehow changed her, overnight. Maybe he was reading too much into it. Rose was his best mate, despite whatever had happened or what happened to her or was happening to her. He was going to be there for her.

"Hurry up, Mickey," Jackie said from the counter. "You don't want to be late for school." He nodded as he quickly finished up, the last of his second serving of sausage, toast, eggs and tea.

The phone rang as Mickey left. It was Hazel, the beauty shop manager, asking Jackie to come in early as she had made the appointments for two women, who had asked for her specifically, yesterday. They were customers who had walked in after Jackie had left. Hazel had taken the liberty of making their appointments for the early morning, since Jackie was booked full for the day, before the usual time of opening since they were quite posh.

Rose and Jack assured her they would be all right, as she rushed out the door. They left early, taking the Tube for Dr. Mera's office.

Despite the calm front, Rose projected, seeing Mickey and remembering the fates of his mum and his Gran, guilt and anguish consumed her and she could feel her stomach souring and turning so violently. It hurt; was this anything like what the Doctor experienced, whenever he met people, whom he knew were going to die and not able to do anything about it because it's a fixed point? If Mickey's family didn't fall apart, he wouldn't leave the Estate; he would stay to take care of them and never leave them behind. He wouldn't find his way to Pete's World and he was vital in the war against the Cybermen, saving an uncountable number of lives. Many times he was the deciding factor in winning a battle. It ended far sooner than expected under Mickey's command taking over the remaining Preachers and their new recruits, turning them into a fighting force. Along the side of Pete and Jake, he was one of the founders of the new Torchwood.

Mickey wouldn't meet Martha, who would become the true love of his life. They wouldn't have the sons and the great-great-granddaughter, who were so important to the Earth and humanity's survival in the twenty-second century. Rose found the feeling sickening to have so many responsibilities on her shoulders. The universe felt so out of control. When they stepped off of the train near Canary Wharf, Rose went to the public loo and made herself vomit up her breakfast into the toilet. She assured the woman attendant there she was fine and claimed it was something she ate. As she walked out of the loo, Rose held her head high against the whims of the universe and fixed points.

DWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDWDW

Rose hid her face behind an office lounge magazine and rolled her eyes at Jack as he shamelessly flirted with Dr. Vallantyne's receptionist, Miss Kathleen Fargo, a young woman with only one arm. Seeing she wasn't interested, he tried to chat up her secretary, Marcus Leeds, a middle age paraplegic man in a wheelchair with bright, short auburn hair and a sprinkle of freckles on his face, hands and neck. Rose thought he was cute and sneaked glances, hiding her blush behind her magazine. Jack backed off with a sheepish grin when the man firmly pointed out him and his wife didn't practice open marriage.

Rose was promptly greeted at nine sharp, by the mermaid-haired psychiatrist and led into her inner office.


End file.
